AUSTRALIAN WILLOW GRUBS

It is not only the crack willow that is under attack; the fact is most willows are now susceptible to this little bug. There are plenty of people out there who will be over the top with the appearance of this willow leaf eating grub. It is their hope that we will see the end of this introduced species and their bull dozers are busy along most of our streams. The willow grub just may be a lot cheaper way of dealing with the willow problem; it has been suggested that willow trees may handle defoliation only three or four times before it could kill them.

But I can tell you this, the willow grub is here big time and it is here in huge numbers. So much so that the trout feeding on these grubs, which were falling from the overhanging, trees 24/7, were really pigging out and putting on a lot of condition.

Some scientists feel that as yet there are no known native parasites or predator that may attack the willow grub. I beg to differ, for it was not just the fish feeding on these grubs but a whole heap of very fat insect-feeding birds. Would you believe, I even witnessed a European wasp flying off with one in its mouth at Tumbling Waters on the Rubicon last season. Even with so many critters feasting on these grubs, they made very little impact on the millions of grubs feeding happily on the willow leaves.

Just before Easter last year we had a bit of wind storm come through the district and I was intrigued to find out how the willow grub handles those conditions. As I thought, there were not a lot of grubs on the willow leaves that I looked at but that observation was short lived because I found them slowly climbing back up the tree trunks to start all over again. All I know is that fish must have had a great feed during that storm.

It was late February when flyflickers were starting to talk about these green caterpillars the trout were feeding on. The big question was how to catch them, what fly do you use? These fish are rising all day long and they just won’t take anything.

During early March I had a house guest, Paolo Testori from Italy staying with me. Now Paolo is a dedicated fly guy, a great caster and has the SIM certificates to prove it. You may say a bit of a young gun. SIM stands for Scuola Italiana di Pesca A Mosca or the Italian Fly Fishing School, for which I am the Australian Ambassador. In the lead up to Paolo’s arrival I was telling him via email about the willow grub and the challenge of solving the problem of how to catch these grub feeders.

By the time Paolo had arrived I was having moderate success catching trout on a fly that was tied by simply wrapping chartreuse floss around a grub hook; not unlike the common New Zealand pattern but with a cream head instead of black.

Warryn Germon and I had also been working together to come up with a pattern that had a high degree of success. We had been trying all sorts of materials but the big problem was to keep the fly up near or on the surface. By the time Paolo had arrived we had a number of patterns that had potential. One pattern that did a bit of damage was made from a piece if woven Chartreuse coloured ribbon, taken from a shoe lace and tied so that it was detached from the hook.

The problem with the shoe lace pattern was floatation; we treated it with all sorts of floatants, including Vaseline but after catching a fish we continually had to re-treat it. It was this floatation problem that sent us back to the tying bench. I tied some up using some white cross-link foam which is very tough and coloured it with a marking pen. This also worked but Warryn had found a block of chartreuse foam which was actually a door jamb from a two-dollar shop. Again both worked well because they floated and the way these flies floated we felt was a key link in attracting old speckles. But we were still getting rejections.

At around the same time I got hold of some Rainy’s Cross-Link Chartreuse Sheet foam 2mm thick and a couple of packets of Rainy’s Parachute Cross cut foam 1/16” Posts. www.rainysflies.com

After a full week fishing with Warryn and Paolo we came to a number of conclusions being that these flies had to float to get the best reaction from our trout. How they floated was another debating point between Warryn and me. I felt that floating on the surface was adequate whilst Warryn thought that they needed to sit lower in the surface film. The number one conclusion was that the flies needed to be tied with a detached body and this was very much a mutual feeling.