I had my best fish of the season at the weekend - this River Eden beauty was a tubby 19 1/2 inches (50cm) and weighed in at 3lbs 6ozs. These fish don't turn up too often on our local waters, I'm usually fortunate enough to get one each season so it will probably be my best of 2010 - but you never know.
The river is down to it's bones but it just goes to show that there is still some good fishing to be had. This beauty, like most of my other big river browns taken over the years, was caught on my favourite method, the upstream nymph.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Best of the season so far
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Another catch up
We were fortunate on what turned out to be our last visit to the lake - mayflies (Danica) were hatching and the fish turned on to them once the hatch got going. It turned out to be a strange sort of day, first we found rising fish and mayflies hatching but the fish hadn't turned onto them, small black adult buzzer imitations took the first few fish of the day and then they turned onto the larger mayflies and stayed on them for the rest of the day. Initially the fish were taking freshly hatched duns and later in the day they turned onto the egg laying spinners, but you had to find rising fish to get any offers, speculative searching of normally productive areas produced nothing.
With hot weather and a very low and weedy river I wasn't too sure if we'd get much sport for two clients on their first visit to the River Eden the week before last, but thankfully the fish didn't let us down and a combination of North country spiders, nymphs and dries tempted a few fish and both Davids got their strings pulled.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Too busy working and fishing
I've had three days at Rutland with three friends, we were hoping that our trip would coincide with the the cream of the top of the water buzzer and nymph fishing but unfortunately it didn't happen - the only thing that really produced was sinking lines and lures, mainly blobs. Either that or fishing on the rudder in the main basin with Di 4's or Di 5's and Sparklers - which produced limit bags for my friends.
Back home I tried a touch of urban angling - fishing the lower Petteril among the mattresses and shopping trolleys - something I've often thought of doing but have never got around to until recently.
Well, that itch has now been scratched, it produced a few small fish which is what I expected, I'm sure that there'll be better fish down there but negotiating my way past mattresses, shopping trolleys, sheets of plywood and all the other rubbish dumped in this part of the river by our city dwellers is not something that I'll be doing too often.
Sport on a very low River Eden has been very good considering that the river is down to it's bones after the driest spring on record. The conditions seem to be suiting the flylife with excellent hatches of all our local species and some very large falls of Black Gnats earlier in the month with literally thousands on the water on occasions - the Eden beauty below was rising steadingly to Black Gnats when it fell for my offering, and as with all my wild brown trout, it was quickly measured, photographed and returned.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Ullswater blowing hot and cold
Having said that, we have had the best midge hatches I have ever seen, at times the water has been covered with discarded midge shucks so the fish should be feeding hard and maybe this is why there seems to be a lot of small fish about so early in the season - these don't usually appear in numbers until late May or into June.
If you look in the right hand corner of the picture above you may see that the air was full of midge.
Ullswater fish are still predominantly 'bottom feeders' - even though there has been very large hatches of midge this fish contained none, as is quite usual, it was full of Cased Caddis and a few Hoglouse.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Weekly fix.... half a day at Rutland's stockies
The Rutland visit was a real bonus as I didn't expect to wet a line on an Easter visit to my sister's in Nottingham, but the rods went in the car - just in case.
I only had time for a half day ticket and restricting myself to a four hour stint, I decided to concentrate my efforts around the Normanton Church area, reports suggested that the shoreline from here down to the dam had been quite productive with black and/or green lures doing best.
A quick search of my fishing bag revealed no lure box, I'd forgotten it, so rather than risk hitting the water lureless, I purchased a few of the recommended flies. As usual I needn't have bothered, I once did the same on an evening visit to Grafham and ended up catching on my own flies, and so it was today - I set up with the bought lures on top dropper and point, and found a Cormorant in my box so this went on the middle dropper. A slow retrieve with the Kelly Green intermediate produced two fish to the Cormorant
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Small fish saves first blank and Ullswater
The river was dropping and clearing after the band of rain that passed through our area on Thursday night/Friday morning and it was just fishable. Once again, there was a distinct lack of Olives - I saw three, so it was on with the nymph again.
Sport was slow but they both did well considering the poor conditions and managed to save their blanks with a fish each.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Second outing 2010 - The River Eamont
The second was 16 3/4 inches (43cm)
The third 15 inches (38cm)
And the fourth - this tubby 15 3/4 incher (40cm)
Monday, March 15, 2010
Here at last - The glorious 15th
I saw my first Large Dark Olive at 1200 and caught my first fish of the new season five minutes later - a 14 1/4" (36.5cm) Brownie on the nymph.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Last Weekend
Sport was slow though, the icy cold water had definitely taken effect. We managed to hit on one pod of fish which produced six grayling and that was it. We did the usual when it's slow and rang the changes, tried heavy flies then light ones, large bugs and small, short lining and indicators - all to no avail - the fish were having none of it.
We've had the rain now and the thaw, and the rivers are up, so no fishing this weekend.
I need to make time to stock the boxes up for the coming season, and have Salmon flies to add to the list this year. I've just received an HMH tube fly tool from Pat Stevens at Flytek and it looks the biz so can't wait to have a go with it, so maybe it's time for my annual winter break for fly tying and the jobs at home that need doing before the Trout season starts - but then again, if the weather is okay next weekend ?