Dry Flies in Greek Canyons
After a nice day of bikefishing and exploring on my Greek trout trip, I met up with a Greek buddy who had a confirmed location to find some trout (it’s always nice to show up to a known spot!)
The on the sides of mount Giona the river flowed clear and cold through a steep canyon, we camped overnight and we simply needed to get out of bed and get fishing on this early summer day.
My Greek buddy, Tolis, is a dry fly enthusiast through and through – and I jokingly asked him what he would be throwing today - we of course answered at the same time “parachutes.” He is a fly tier as well and comes to each trip with only one box of oddly similar flies… 90% parachutes in tan and grey. He has a few variations in there for a proper stone fly and hopper but he sticks mainly to the parachutes he loves because - they work up here.
This section of river is 3hrs from any major town and with only a small population of freshwater fisherman, the stream gets little coverage. However, when it does the thought is that the fisherman are catch and keep without regard to the regulations. Let’s cross our fingers this isn’t normally the case, but it is a worry in the Greek wild as there is little enforcement or education on these topics out here.
As we packed up and drank some streamside coffee we admired a few tributaries coming into the main stream and headed to our starting location. We would fish up from below in the canyon and back to camp. We had a decent walk ahead of us and of course a slow start as seems to be traditional in the Mediterranean culture.
After bushwhacking to get down to the river, of which our compact rods helped greatly with, we dipped our feet in the cool water of the stream and were happy. Dry flies quickly hit the water as setup was simple since flies were tied on back at camp – we just extended and casted.
The river was full of structure to create nice pools and pocket water, and just a few boulders up from where we started I hooked into a jumper of a brown, wohoo! After landing it we were pleased as we were not skunked for the day – a great start already.
Soon though we realized the late start was not the best for us, and the hot sun seemed to slow down the fishing, we had a few rises of tiny fish from 1-3 but the heat got to us and the fish we think… Tolis even veered away from his holy parachute in an attempt to see if the fly was the issue, but with little response.
Soon the sun dipped a little and we started to see some more action, the day ended with 7 or 8 fish to the net and some nice acrobatics to keep us excited.
Back at camp we pulled a beer each out of the river where we left them and reflected on the day, and how the testing worked out on a few new items for REYR – the wading booties and our new 7ft rod. Both performed flawlessly and I was excited for their launch.
Check out the video from the day HERE
