World Fly Fishing Champs 2024 France Ollie Bassett - Session 1 Têt river
Now that I have a website with a blog, I can publish some of the recap articles I wrote from my sessions at the 2024 World Fly Fishing Championship in the French pyrenees. Upon reflection, it was the most enjoyable championship I have attended so far, with quite fair beats and very well organised. The rivers were very technically challenging for wild browns, and there was great sight fishing with dry fly in the alpine lake sectors. Fullingmill did a cool video series following the worlds in 2024 which is worth watching if you haven't already on YouTube. After I've caught up on 2024 worlds, I'll need to get writing about 2025 in the Czech Republic.
My first session of the 2024 World Fly Fishing Championship in France was on the Têt River. Although we hadn’t checked it out during practice due to there being no training water, we had fished a river called Le Carol which was supposedly similar in terms of structure and fish behavior. My main takeaway was that the fish would be super fast on the nymph and I would need to fish with a lower rod, more contact, shorter dropper/length to first fly and heavier beads than I would typically to compensate.
My first beat (beat number 2)(the session was the combined fish size score from 2*2 hour sub sessions on an upper and lower beat, the second un fished that day) was really long, over 600 m and due to the river being quite overgrown I couldn’t look at the whole beat without walking through all my water. Although the controller showed me the top marker on google maps, I had no idea what to expect, so I decided to fish the better-looking spots and keep moving if I wasn’t catching much. I set up my 11’ 2wt nymphing rod with 0.10 mm (7X) tippet with a 0.14 mm micro Euro nymphing leader, along with a spare rod which I left on the bank, and my dry fly rod (9’6 3 wt with 2 wt line and Spanish dry leader, 0.09 mm tippet) which I took with me. I used these same rods in all the river sessions.
The bottom of my beat had about 30 m of shallow pocket water with a deeper part going under a tree, then a slow pool – glide above which were two pools, the bottom better looking and less swirly. Next was a very deep hole with complex currents, above which was 75m of shallow pocket water. The next 300m or so above that I still have no idea!
I started at the bottom of the beat and spent just under half an hour Euro nymphing this area changing between single and double nymphs for three fish, two of which were above the tree, and two missed. I fished well but a little stiff due to some session one nerves which was to be expected. I decided I had wasted a bit of time so skipped the next flat/slow glide and went straight to the next pool.
I started there with two nymphs, I don’t remember the exact weights, but I think a 3 mm and 3.3 mm which seemed suitable for the water depth and pace. A few casts in I had a nippy tap on the flies which repeated again a few casts later. In training on the Carol, I had experienced similar very fast takes so quickly changed the point fly to a very heavy nymph to increase contact by keeping the rig straight. This brought four fish quickly from this same spot (mainly on the top dropper) as well as one undersize. I then fished a nice drop off into the pool which I didn’t catch anything from which was surprising. I decided to just fish the drop into the next pool to save time. However, once I realised how strange the currents were I skipped past it completely (given I had used 70 minutes already and had a lot more water to cover), although I did catch one brown as I was leaving when the flies lifted at the end of the drift.
Moving upstream, I tried a few casts with the deep and heavy rig (I had both lighter and longer/heavier on a few pre rigs to save time) in the middle of the big pool. I caught a nice one here before trying some casts in the deeper head of the pool. I’m sure there were fish there but given the water was complicated and to catch them I’d have needed to waste time with several changes I elected to skip this to and carry on to the shallow pocket water which the sun was now on to see if I could catch fish faster there. This turned out to be a good decision and in the final 35 minutes of the session I caught 9 more fish over the next 75 m, as well as a few missed, undersized and a stocked rainbow (which didn't count to make things more fair).
With 17 fish at the swap, I knew I was doing pretty well which was confirmed by my controller from his sector WhatsApp group. I was happy about that and reset mentally for the next beat further up the river. I was a bit frustrated by the first hour where I’d fished a bit slow and stiff (first session nerves) and from getting to the better water with only 40 minutes left. That being said, I wasn’t really sure which water would be the best beforehand having never fished the river before, so that time was instructive for the remainder of the session as it taught me what to do. I have no idea what the remaining half of the beat looked like, but I assume the water was similar. The length of the beats and the difficulty of scouting them made it difficult for anglers unfamiliar with the water which I’m sure was helpful for the local French team.
Unlike 2023 in Slovakia where the beat rotation was done on adjacent beats with an angler swap, the second beats for everyone were much further upriver and were un fished (that day). The two beats made for a significantly fairer competition in my opinion, although it was a little difficult in two hours to know where to spend time as they were super long.
At my next beat further upstream the Têt was smaller, faster and more overgrown than downstream in the morning, but was also very long (500 m), although this time I got to look at most of it. The bottom had a very short section at the top of some pocket water below a deep and shadowy pool. I set up my spare nymphing rod here with a deeper nymph rig with another one of the very heavy flies on the point to save time. Above that was 400 m or so of deep and shallow (fast) bouldery pocket water, as well as one small pool to the top of the beat.
I spent a few minutes in the pockets at the bottom of the beat before trying the deep pool with my other nymph rod with the deeper heavier setup. I caught two or three fish here and lost another which ate the heavy fly with the bigger hook to give me three more fish after 30 minutes (20 fish). I then took my main nymph rod and spent the remainder of the session working my way up the bouldery pocket water switching between single nymph, two nymphs and two nymphs with the bottom one super heavy for connection in the fast swirly pockets. I caught a few undersized fish in the shallow pocket water and missed the odd very fast and light take but caught 7 more to finish on 27 fish. I caught mainly in the slightly deeper pocket water in the bottom half of the beat, although I also caught a couple near the top (which I very nearly reached).
My 27 fish gave me the session win (my first in the worlds) which I was super stoked about! The best flies were size 16/18 pheasant tails with a hot orange thread collar silver bead (morning) and hares ear nymphs in the same size with copper and gold beads and a few on the pheasant tail in the afternoon. The bigger and heavier fly also caught several fish in deeper spots, which was nice given that I had it on mainly to improve the drift rather than expecting it to catch a lot of fish.
Follow along for my blog posts on sessions 2-5 of the 2024 World Fly Fishing Champs which I'll post over the next couple of weeks.
