Sunday, December 30, 2007

2007 Review


The Brown Trout fishing started really well in 2007, with the milder winters we are experiencing nowadays the river temperatures were relatively high for the time of year and a lot of fish seemed to be in their summer lies from day one (15th March).

The nymph scored best for me in the first few weeks of the season and produced my best trout of the year from the River Eamont at the end of March - a 55cm (21 1/2 inch) specimen which weighed 3lbs 8ozs.



Even though we did have relatively good hatches of large Dark Olives (Baetis Rhodani) on occasions, the dry fly didn't come into it's own until mid April but from then we had some fantastic surface sport with good hatches of various species including Yellow May Dun (Heptagenia sulphurea), Medium Olive (Baetis vernus), Small Dark Olive (Baetis Scambus), Iron Blue Dun (Baetis niger) and others (proof that the Eden system still has a wide diversity of aquatic species) - even when hatches were sparse to non existent you could still pull fish to the surface when speculating with appropriately sized dries.

Ullswater did fish well on occasions but not as well as in previous years - I think that was down to angling pressure, there was definitely more boats on the lake than we've had for some years and this does affect the fishing.

From June onwards we had long periods of wet weather and the rivers rarely got back to summer level, which, for me, did appear to take it's toll on dry fly sport, good hatches were rare whenever I was on the water, Blue Winged Olive (Ephemerella ignita) hatches were very sparse and evening sport was slow with poor falls of BWO spinner, although if you did hit it right we did have some very good hatches of Sedge on some evenings.

My best Grayling of the summer (47cm) came to the nymph


The Grayling fishing has been very good this year with good sport on dries, spiders and light nymphs into early November.
The first prolonged frosts of the winter lowered water temperatures and the grayling dropped back into the slower deeper water forcing us to revert to deeper fished nymphs to locate them, and thats the way it stayed until the end of the year.
BEST WISHES AND TIGHT LINES TO ALL FOR 2008

The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray

Well they certainly did in my case - I had great plans for the few days between Christmas and New Year, and they all involved the River Eden and Grayling.
That was before we had approximately 65mm of rain on Thursday (28 December) and the river came up about 3 metres plus.

A river runs through it - somewhere!
The River Petteril where it enters the Eden

Thursday wasn't a complete loss as I joined six fellow members of AAPGAI (Association of Advanced Professional Game Angling Instructors) for a casting session, we must have looked mad, seven of us in the middle of a field Double Hauling in the pouring rain but I don't think any of us cared - the 'crack' was good and we all enjoyed it.
With a bit of luck and fine weather the river should drop back quickly and an outing may be on the cards early in the new year.