It’s been raining and the lake level has risen a few feet, maybe even a metre or more. This could/should be enough to trigger the Snakehead to spawn. I can’t remember a rise in water levels at this time of year before, so it’s definitely more of a maybe than a given. But I would be very surprised if we don’t actually see Snakehead babies appear within the next week, or days even.

I’ve positioned the Battleship in a part of the lake that I haven’t fished since David was visiting back in January. I’ll fish here this week and then make a decision on where I want to be after that. It’s a nice change of scenery. This particular bay is also excellent for Gourami as well as Snakehead babies. It’s also a nice bay for swimming too and I certainly need to start training this skill properly again.

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I have family down south in NZ. Always fun to visit, catch up on life, and maybe drag my son out for a fishing trip.

The weather forecast was positive with somewhat low wind, day in fog to start. The day wasn't going to be warm but you can't always get everything in life. Plus activity warms you up at some point.

Off we set, a bit of a journey in the car. Low fog was the order of the day.

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This week’s fly, the Pop-lip, is a bit of a follow up on the siliclone from a few weeks ago. The main reason being I cleared out my bass box and realised I needed to replace a few.

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We have moved to Bovec, Julian Alps, and we are fishing Soca river.  We arrived on Monday under heavy rain. Tuesday morning was still grey and rain so we had nap after breakfast. When woke up it weather was starting to get better, no rain and little brighter weather, not sun, yet brighter.
 
We did shopping and fueled car and during that hour weather truly changed. Sun came behind clouds, or should I say clouds just disappeared. And we got hurry to go fishing.
 
Tuesday would "rehearsal" day as is totally new river and have to find spots etc. There was lot fishermen in area we planned to fish as rivers on lower part was unclear, you can't say muddy as there won't turn really muddy, water just isn't emerald green clear like crystal clear anymore. And level in down part had rose too much for fishing.

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Today, Thursday, we had a small competition. We planned it right after the one we had in April. We ended up with the same participants as the last time, we had two more registered but their car broke down on the way to the competition. That was sad as it would have been nice to catch up with Seppo and Stefan. And a couple of more casters in the competition wouldn’t have hurt.
The weather hasn’t been on our side on the competition days. Today we had some wind in the start of the competition and later in the competition we had quite a strong wind. Always in a bad direction as the wind turned after every time we built or adjusted the course. And in the end of the competition we also got heavy rain.

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It’s not by accident that tarpon fishing, like horseshoes, has several flavors of “close.” I learned a few new terms this past week. “Bitey,” or “getting bit,” and ‘jumping a fish” were already in my pocket, but now I have “chewy” and “chewed,” and “putting fish in the air.” Add all these to “looks,” “nods,” “leans,” and “follows” and you’ve pretty much got much of my migrating tarpon fishing experiences. I’ve had some connected successes, but not this week. I specialized in “looks.” I also got one “crouch” and another “swing and a miss.” In my defense, the weather was often rough, the viz poor and even the few bait guys “weren’t putting fish in the air.”

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