This is the time of year when Otago anglers get excited about fishing the cicada hatch on the tussock lakes.
However, these days are not as common as anglers expect.
The alternatives are days when no cicadas hatch or fly, usually due to the air temperature being too low, or when there are plenty of cicadas but trout do not rise to them.
Psychologically these days knock the angler back, making them wonder if it is worth fishing.
The question to ask is how would you fish before or after the cicada season?
Trout have to feed regardless of whether there are cicadas or not. Cicadas are only part of the trout diet over the course of a year, so most of the time they feed on something else.
This something else can be many things — midge pupae, sedges, damselfly nymphs or adults, water boatmen or koura.
Fish feeding on midge, sedges or adult damsel flies are easily identified as they are taken on the surface while the others are taken sub surface.
Trout do not often feed exclusively on one particular creature unless there is a great concentration of them.
Most of the time they cruise around looking for anything and everything that is edible.
So, if you arrive at a lake to fish the cicada hatch and there are no cicadas or trout rising to cicadas, rather than sulk, think what are the alternatives — fishing blind with a water boatman or a damsel fly nymph imitation.
If you know that there are koura in the lake, a Mrs Simpson fished slowly down deep will catch fish.
If you arrive early in the morning before it is warm enough for cicadas to fly, trout may well be rising to midge.
If you are still on the water late in the evening, then trout that are making splashy rises will be feeding sedges.
Having alternative strategies when you go fishing can turn what might have been a fishless day into a productive one.
At this time of year, I like to fish for trout feeding on willow grub and low water offers the best chance of success but recently the Taieri, which is one of my favourite willow grub waters, has been higher than the ideal, especially in the middle and lower reaches.
So, the logical thing to do was to go to the upper reaches where the water was at a more fishable level.
Where there were willows, fish feeding on the grub were catchable with some effort and where there were no willows, a diving beetle imitation produced some fish.
When fishing with Richard Fitzpatrick at the weekend, we fished close together. We both fished beetle imitations, he fished a dry coch-y-bondhu and I fished a sunken diving beetle. Both patterns caught fish.
Not surprising, as there are more beetles in the world than all the other insects put together.
