Beautiful spring weather not doing fishermen any favours

The weather is very much like last year at the moment and it's not doing us fishermen any favours. At a time of year when we should be enjoying the cream of our daytime sport the rivers are low and gin clear and the fish are keeping their heads down in the very bright conditions.
It hasn't stopped me going out though - you have to have an optimistic attitude as a fisherman, one of the things I have learned over my many years on river and lake is that fish can be unpredictable creatures at times, they don't always follow the rules so you can never say never, and I have been rewarded with some success on my occasional daytime foray.

I have managed a couple of outings on Ullswater on the days when we have been blessed with more seasonable conditions - the first was short and sweet, the weathermen were as accurate (or not!) as normal and the winds were about 15 - 20 m.p.h. more than forecast, there were 'White Horses' coming down the lake, but I decided to brave it, I wasn't taking any risks though - I live for fishing but I'm not going to die for it, so I stayed out of the rougher open water and worked a couple of calmer bays that I could reach safely and was rewarded with a few fish - my first of the season (below) came to a Zulu.
As it turned out it may have been a blessing that the wind restricted my wandering as my electric outboard died the death not long after I hit the water - nowadays I use the electric to keep my boat on line when drifting and I reckon I can't have given the battery a long enough charge after the long winter lay off.

Conditions were much more favourable for my second outing with the perfect scenario of good cloud cover and ripple. With the battery fully charged this time I had a problem free day and the fish obliged with a steady trickle throughout the session - they're still pretty lean after the winter and possibly not that fussy with fish coming to all three flies on my cast.

My third outing failed to get started as the good old weathermen were at it again, the forecast was ideal, a cloudy overcast day with a wind - perfect I thought, until I got up to the lake to find more blue sky than cloud, the sun blazing down and not a breath of wind. So then the decision had to be made - do I stay or do I go ?

I didn't want to risk wasting the only day I had to fish over the weekend floundering about in a flat calm so the decision was made - back home, swap the lake gear for waders and 5 weight then off to the river - as it turned out the forecast was right, just a few hours late and the lake would have fished in the afternoon, but, decisions have to be made and I had a good afternoon on the river. Any day fishing should be a good day, that is unless it's on a lake with the sun blazing down and a surface like glass.