My favourite competition, The Floating Line only competition run by Grand Max. As last years top rod I knew i was going to get some stick if I didn't catch and being paired up with Bewl expert Mick Dwyer was a good start. The rumour mill told us that static or slow retrieves with a team of hoppers, boobies and daddies was the way to go. I started with two hoppers and a daddy on the top dropper and last years match winning fly, a size 12 yellow booby on the point. Right from the off I got takes and pulls but nothing I could hit. Micky was fishing in much the same way but without the booby. He got no interest at all! After 30 minutes he changed to a booby on the point and promptly statrted to catch. We stayed in pretty much the same area for most of the morning and it became apparent that the whole reservoir had turned on and fish were being caught all over and on a variety of flies. This competition has a compulsory lunch period and so we came in to find that several anglers had already had their limits of 8 fish. Mick had 7 by then to my 5. I included a really nice grown on fish of 3.12 in my bag but was still well down on the overall leader. My team were struggling with 3 fish being the best other bag and one blank at lunch.
After a great meal and a beer or two we returned to the area by the moorings of the General Belgrano and Mick quickly got his limit and 4 hours of time bonus which worked out at an extra 8lbs. I caught my 6th fish and all of sudden the fish stopped feeding. For the next three hours I had very little interest and it was quiet all round, finally at 4.30 we moved to the far side of the dam and I quickly caught my last two fish on nymphs some 3 feet down. I ended up with 17lb 6oz for my 8 fish which was a heavy limit on the day as most people had found some smallish (1lb 4oz) stockies were the most likely to take the fly. Team wise we came nowhere but it was good fun and fished in the spirit as all matches used to be before the introduction of serious prizes.