Spot What The Trout Are Eating - Exactly What They Are Eating

I just came back from a fabulous trip to Lake Toolondo (December 27th-29th). It is probably the best trout lake in Australia at the moment. The trout were biting on mudeyes for most of the weekend. However on the last morning we couldn't get a bite. When we came back to camp we found out why from our neighbours.

We noticed the trees in the lake were covered in hatching dragonflies and damsel flies, probably from their migration the night before. As we stared at these lovely little creatures and noticed them falling into the water we didn't put one and one together. The trout were mainly feeding on the unfortunate dragonflies and damsel flies that slipped back into the lake before their wings had a chance to dry out.

Our neighbour had worked this out and was smart enough to throw a few into the water. This created a berley trail that attracted plenty of feeding fish. The boys put a couple of newly formed dragonflies on their hooks and started hooking fish consistently. The dragonflies sunk on their baited hooks quite easily but if they managed to float they generally caught a trout. Later when they cleaned the fish they noticed old stomach contents of mudeyes and a more recently devoured bunch of dragonflies and damsel flies.

Why didn't we work this out? I think there are a few reasons:

• When something works for two days in a row you just assume its going to work the next day. It's very hard to think about things more dynamically.
• I have rarely seen anyone talk about dragonfly and damsel fly imitations in fly fishing literature. Its always the mudeye that seems to come up in fishing articles and books. Even though we could see a lot of them floating helplessly on the water it just didn't register that the trout were feeding on them.
• Berleying with insects is something I have never heard of but obviously it works!