Beat Stategy

[Paul Bourcq]

I thought maybe we could all discuss beat strategy a bit.  Most everyone here has the rods, has some bugs, and has a few tools in there comp belt.  But more often than not i see comps lost by how water was approached, the strategy used, and the method fished. 

There are several ways to fish a beat and i know its situational.

I know guys who will throw a dry dropper, grid it off and spend 3 hrs going through the beat one time but covering every inch of water. 

Ive seen people throw dry dropper with a heavy point bug, hit they high spots, then come back through there beat again.

Ive seen people go up the edge of their beat with just a dry a fly

Ive seen people go up the edge of their beat  throwing white streamers

What makes you guys do one thing or another when strategizing on a beat.  I like to fish my beat thourough one time.  I know  in a comp i fished last year i had to fish behind somebody i knew.  I knew they would run a double czech style sighter rig and pound the edges to death.  knowing this i went to some riffle water that i know he would pass and caught enough fish to move on to the afternoon session in 7 inches of water.  Even though i had never seen this person fish he told me one time how he liked to fish and i was listening. I knew how the other guy would fish so i did the opposite.

I know people  showed alot of discipline fishing to one pocket of slack water in nationals.  They knew fish would be there a and made it happen.  So my question is what are some reasons you have strategized the way you did or changed strategies and what was the outcome?  How do you attack water?

[Paul Bourcq]

bump

[Dejon Hamann]

i was typing a long reply and lost... be back.

[Dejon Hamann]

Guess I'm not in the strategery mode right now, so I'll throw some first hands at ya':

2007 NC Regional:
What I did:
You could jump across the upper Nanny in spots, so it wasn't really necessary to grid it off. However, my beat felt fairly long... at least at first.  I just started at the bottom and worked my way through the whole beat.  Got to the top and realized I could do it again.  I guess I could have plucked off the skinny spots and then turned around and pounded the sweet runs/holes, but then again that could have back fired. Loren was right below me and tried that tactic (if memory serves), but when he turned around to fish his "honey hole" a worm-dunker had moved in.  Ouch.  Btw, he still beat me for 1st I believe.
20/20:
In retrospect I'm not sure I got more than 1 fish on the second pass through, so with another shot at it I might slow down and attempt work the whole beat from bottom to top just once especially in consideration of a small stream of this nature.  I recall Ungerman telling me that George had the youth team fishing a single dry then a single nymph once through their beats in Portugal. We’re talking about completely different rivers here, but the thought remained: is it best to lightly search a piece of water first for the “players” and then pound it with the heavy artillery.

2008 Utah Regional:
What I did:
Hook and lose a ton of fish. I wish I was using exclusively competition hooks back then.  The upper Provo was a good sized river. My first beat had some marginal riffle water split by an island at the top that led into the longest, deepest, sweetest looking run/pool you'd ever seen.  So long you could section it off into it’s primal parts and spend time on each. The whole beat was pretty darn short though.  So, I quickly pounded the skinny stuff for about 20minutes and then spent literally 2.6 hours on that pool.  Lost a few lunkers I just could not turn, but measured 11 great big fish!  Came in last.  Then the second river beat.  Longest I’ve seen yet.  The type of beat you might have to ask for directions mid way through.  I did what anyone would do and just worked my way from the bottom up.  When I finally got to the top of the beat I was going to turn around and hit the sweet spots (that I had saved a bit rather than really pound on the first go through), but God stepped in and pulled the old puppet strings on some canal master up in the mountains who decided to drain some obscure canal-pass 20 minutes earlier.  The river blew out for exactly 45 minutes ruining the end of our session.  Devin was the only one who scored a fish in the last 30 minutes of the beat.
20/20: Always have backup plan w/ a few big “slumpbusters” set up on a streamer rod.  Strike detection was also a big downfall for me then. I wish I could go back and try some of my long leader techniques with a coiled leader.  One thing I love about competing is this: You basically think you are the “shnizzle” on your home waters. Then you travel to a comp. and get your ass handed to you… which is IMHO the only pure way to progress by leaps and bounds… if you don’t quit or course!   

2008 Canada Nationals:
What I did: The Diable means "The Devil" and it was hands down the hardest river to wade. I had a beat in the upper section that Anthony had scored 9 fish on earlier.  This was tricky, tough, painful wading.  Most people, even great young waders, used wading sticks.  I broke two during the competition (sorry Randy  ).  This particular beat was just above George Daniel.  In practice we had developed a unique way of fishing the river after watching closely some local non competition guy really “put it to them!”. We knew these brookies were aggressive and “looking up”. They didn’t respond exceptionally well to an upstream classic nymphing technique, but swing dries and nymphs downstream and you could get them to react every time.  The top half of my beat was basically a class 3 rapid,  but we were trading sections with a co-competitor so I didn’t have to worry about that at first.  So, I fished the lower section of my beat like an old typerwriter… back  forth, moving about 10 feet downstream inbetween “lines.”  My tactic was to cast and swing my 2 dries with a nymph trailer across sweet looking spots – if a brookie made an attempt for the rig I would quickly pull it out before they had a chance to connect. Then I would slither into the closest position I could find and present the fly again – this time I would lag my set… and if everything worked out I was within feet of the fish at contact for a quick net job.  This was only possible because these fish would attack your fly over and over again… but ONLY if you didn’t sting them on the first pass.  I was doing quite well with maybe 11 fish scored, when my controller said: “the last guy got most of his down there! You’re running out of time, don’t pass it up!” I listened.  That was stupid.  Never pay too much (not a golden rule) attention to where the last guy caught his fish.  At the half way mark I traded with my co-competitor.  The top half of the beat was a beast. I did my best not to drowned and ended up swimming my way to 14 fish.  After netting that last one I was dead tired, actually had to crawl it in. I almost threw up from exhaustion.  My controller looks at me and says: “why don’t you do that one more time.” With a sly challenging smile.  Somehow I was able to swim back across the river and sting one more single fish at buzzer. I almost didn’t get it back in time due to exhaustion.  That single fish ended up giving me first just above GD and is thus far my personal biggest accomplishment from all my competition experience.  A combination of pure determination and unique presentation won it.
20/20: I wouldn’t change a thing.  Except maybe get in better shape next time, wear more padding, and definitely a surf jacket!!!!

Not sure if much of that amounts to theories on "Beat Strategy." I guess the one thing I am left with is that each river, each day, each hour infact presents a new set of problems and challenges.  You can most certainly acquire a wealth of knowledge to aid your "beat strategy", but in the end you have to be adaptable.  It's never purely a matter of : "when presented by X apply Y."  That's what I love so much about this sport... very Zen like.