My third trip to Flanchford Mill this year, what a difference, The water is clearing, the fish are feeding on all sorts of insects and the fishing is much better. I started on the bottom lake and was surprised to find a few fish actively feeding on adult Damsels. Not having anything similar I put a nymph across their nose and caught the first fish which gave me as good a fight as I've ever had in a pond. I moved to the next lake and found more moving fish, this time they were hammering damsel nymphs in the reeds. Being a purist I put on a size 14 cats whisker and quickly hooked two, losing the first when it dived into a reed bed and landing the second. Lake three was more challenging and a change to a black and green nymph eventually got me a fish. I tried for an hour on lake one but no takes were forthcoming so I left if for another day. I saw several adders during the day including one i nearly stepped on. A nice couple of hours fishing.

The following is a press release for last weeks match:-

"The 25th annual PSUK national at Bewl water on the 5th of June attracted a strong field with 11 regional teams, 22 individual competitors and a number of guests and officials resulting in 78 anglers taking to the water.

Following a number of difficult days fishing the match was expected to be very competitive and not a little challenging.Indeed with a final rod average of around 2.9 fish per angler it proved to be so.

Bewl water appears to have returned to its high water levels from the drought of 2006 and there are now a number of areas where weed growth is coming back. Unfortunately for the anglers, there is not yet sufficent to stop algal blooms occuring in periods of hot weather and during the week before the match large areas had become covered with a green film of algae making tham largely unfishable. The fish too were being difficult and had been feeding variously on small green buzzer, pin fly and daphnia.

The stocking policy at Bewl results in fish being well spread out and this was the case on match day. Most anglers found fish in the areas around 7lb Creek, Bramble Bay and the cages but there were also lots of fish at the top of Hook straight and in the Nose. Catching them was the difficulty.

Practice days had shown that two methods stood out, An Intermediate line with a team of nymphs or a sinking line with booby's and blobs. It was this second method that the Metropolitan team chose to fish and it proved to be the correct decision. All four of their team anglers (Chris Reeves, Mark Stewart, Russell Logan and Tim Ashman)caught fish for a team total of 17 fish, well ahead of the second placed South West region who were looking for a hat trick of wins in the event. The top rod on the day was Met captain Chris Reeves, who returned a 7 fish bag for over 14lbs including a 4.12 fish that would normally have won the biggest fish trophy but was beaten by a fish of 4.15 on the day.

Top individual for the third year running was Gary Haskins of Avon and Somerset who also caugth 7 fish but his were slightly smaller."

End of press release.

It was to say the least a very interesting day, I started on the sinking DI3 but got no takes. A change to the DI5 and both my boat partner and I had fish one after the other from an area near the cages. I then took a succession of fish on the same method using a very slow figure of eight retrieve, with a take or follow on almost every cast and one fish every 30 minutes or so. After 3pm it slowed down and with 6 in the boat we hunted for another shoal without success before returning to the previous spot where I took one more and lost the fish the would have completed my limit. Two fish came to the booby on the point, 2 more to the booby on the top dropper and in the afternoon all three fish came to coromorants on the droppers. My boat partner couldn't build on his early success and ended up with just the single fish. I was pleased as punch to win the team event and thanks must go to all the guys who practiced and worked so hard for our success.

With the Met team we were again at Bewl for the 25th annual PSUK national event. I practiced on tuesday and Wednesday with Mark Stewart and the fishing was to say the least hard. The weather of the past week , hot and sunny and an occasional rain storm had resulted in a large algal bloom and areas of the lake looked like a lawn. Fishing here was difficult to say the least. Thankfully other areas had cleared so it was a case of running around till you found a fishable spot and then sticking there.

On day one I couldn't buy a take so spent the day tidying up my fly lines and trying a few off the wall ideas. We determined the fish were well scattered and that there was a good concentration between the cages and Bramble bay but apart form a pull or two and a few (very few) follows nothing came to the boat. On returning ashore the other teams began the usual game of Bullsh** and didn't believe we had caught nothing.

Day two was if anything more difficult for me depite me taking a couple of fish early on on oprange blobs on the DI3, after this early success I fished a nymph set up for most of the day and had next to no fish. This despite other teams doing well on similar tactics. Mark on the other hand got it sorted later on and took 5 fish and missed many more. It became apparent that a lot of fish were "falling off" after apparently being well hooked.
This always provokes the soft mouth discussion. I feel the fish are just not taking properly and the hook holds are in the tiniest bit of lip skin and hence pull out after a short fight.

Anyway we retired to the pub for dinner, incidentally if you are ever in Pembury in Kent I can heartilly recommend the Black Horse as a pub and restaurant. Great beer Great food and good atmosphere. We tipped heavily and the waitress tried to give it back! In the pub we decided on a team method, DI3 or DI5 lines, Two Boobies and two nymphs fished washing line style with a varied retrieve. The fall back method was the intermedate and nymphs. Full of expectation we retired to the bar.

Well the weather made my mind up for me, rain in the midlands or fair and cloudy in the south..no contest, so with a South African friend in tow I set out for Bewl water. We arrived in perfect conditions and found fish on the surface everywhere around 7lb creek and the cages. Could i catch them....in a word NO!, Darren had a fish on a black buzzer but after 3 hours hard work that was all we had to show for it. Finally I gave in to temptation and put on an orange booby and started pulling it on a DI3 line. While still not catching anything at least there were a lot of follows. We moved to the main bowl where the majority of the anglers fishing Lexus pairs event had chosen to fish and dropped into a drift behind Tim Ashman, He had caught a few on the DI3 and booby already and I soon started to get takes and had three nice fish in 30 minutes. The breeze calmed down a bit and it got sunnier killing the action so I changed to the DI5 and began to catch again. All the fish were full of Daphnia. A reasonable days sport.

My apologies to anyone waiting on instalment 4 of this years log but I'm afraid my angling adventures have take me far and wide this month and I've compeletly ignored my blog.

It all began on the 7th at Draycote, an informal outing turned into a competition, the fish were shoaled up tightly on the far shore and it became a bit like Picadilly Circus with boats pushing and shoving to obtain best drifts. Needless to say we ignored them and fished elsewhere in peace and quiet not even the fish interupted us. One fish on a Dabbler was all I managed.

The next trip was to Hanningfield in Essex. We fished on a Wednesday and were surprised to find that the fishery now allows people to fish for trout with spinners. The number of trolling boats made getting a good drift difficult however most left at lunch time and in the afternoon I managed to partially crack the method and catch six fish. The fish were following small buzzers and crunchers fished on a midge tip line. If you felt the takes you didn't hook the fish, Finally it was necessary to retrieve very slowly unitl just 2 feet of the tip was out of the water, then lift very slowly and hang the flies with the topo dropper about 18" down. You then had to watch the line like a hawk and lift into any flick or sideways movement. Four of my fish came like this two each to a Red Holographic thorax cruncher and a red holo cheeked buzzer. The other two were taken static as the flies sank without any retrieve, both on the buzzer. My view on the trolling/spinning? I understand the need to diversify to increase the revenues but done like this it this can only chase away the fly fishers, especially those of use who fish from drifting boats. Allowing spinning form an anchored boat would be a reasonable compromise but to allow trolling...not for me thanks. If the fishery want to increase the number of anglers they need to start with the basics. Like breakfast...how can anyone run a cafe at a fishery and not opewn before 9am? And while were dripping about the cafe, they also refuse to do takeway sandwiches...You must get a seat and a table number to order anything and then you may not take it away......madness! Its a shame as both the fish and the fishing here are amongst the best.

The following Saturday found me at Bewl water, fishing the Anglian Water team match. Bewl had began to go green and fishing was expected to be fairly hard. I drew Billy Rankin, a local expert and was delighted to find he had been practicing hard all week and knew where the fish were. We started near the dam in Canoe Club corner. Nothing for an hour then I hooked three at once, losing two and the middle dropper in the process. As I landed the one remaining fish Billy hooked and landed two at once. We then struggled to find the fish for a whiule before moving to the cage area where Billy quickly got three more on one drift, we drifted around the north side of the cages for a while and I gradually caught up to 6 -4 before Billy finished off his limit with a run of takes and follows nearer the shore as fish finally began to rise and feed in the wind lanes. I missed a couple of takes and dropped another fish and then it all went dead. We ended up with a team total of 31 fish and not qualifying by just 1lb. which was OK as I couldn't do the final anyway.

Wednesday night saw me at Ashmere when I should have been watching Man Utd in the european cup final. Time for a compromise. Ashmere is a pretty syndicate water at Shepperton in West London. It has four lakes and the etiquette is to catch a fish from each lake to complete the limit. Fishing was pretty easy as bad weather had put most of the syndicate off attending during the past week and the fish were more than happy to eat my Red/Black buzzer. Thankfully I managed to finish in time to race home for kick off and watch the team beat Chelsea. Which was nice. Its a shame I couldn't spend more time at Ashmere as it is a very loveley place

Commitments to the Italian Fly Fair in Umbria and the Dutch fly fair in Holland meant that I haven't wet a line since although it has been a great couple of week. The Dutch fair was held in an old fort (15th Century) and was a really good laugh. Surprisingly for a country with few trout venues the Dutch love to fly fish and were very interested in my emerging Mayfly patterns as well as bloodworm and buzzer pupae, they use this type of fly to catch Roach, Rudd and Ide.

Weather permitting I'm off to Grafham on Friday, Watch this space.

Yesterday I should have been playing golf. It rained...which is a bit like saying Hurricane Katrina was a bit breezy. Anyway the endless pools of water on the course led me to Flanchford Mill, the Surrey S and TA water near Reigate. Of course the rain had affected the lakes badly, the little stream that trickles and tinkles through the 5 lakes was a turbid torrent thundering over the spillway. I caught several large sticks and some smaller branches before common sense said "go home before the rain starts again."
So I did.

What a change a few days makes! Following the succesful trip of last week I went off to Bewl full of expectation. The weather had changed somewhat and the previous day had seen high temperatures and cloudless skies. Sunday was a grey and threatening prospect and the weather kept changing all day. Torrential rain for 10 minutes followed by warm humid conditions and then rain or cold breezes. Experience shows Bewl fish do not like that and we struggled to find any fish. I ended up with three fish using the cormorant booby washing line combination from the week before. There was a Lexus competition on and the majority of the boats were holding off "No name bay" or the dam but I really don't like fishing in crowds. In retrospect we should have joined them as elsewhere was very patchy.

First trip of the new season and what a start! Fishing in our club competition I started off on the old green bank at the top of Hook Straight. Regulars of Bewl will remember "Flo " who used to fish here a lot of the early season, I still chuckle at the memory of her berating an angler for throwing his fag packet over the side. Anyway, the fish were hard on the banks and with a slime line set up with four flies, a peach blob on the top dropper, two size 12 cormorants and a viva on the point I quickly got into fish and had four in the first 30 minutes. These were all smallish stockies but superfit and in great condition. It went dead for 45 minute before a change from the viva to a booby on the point resulted in a further four fish from just under the surface. I took two at once which was exciting for a while, luckily the both ran in the same direction and I was able to net the top fish and unhook it before landing the fish on the point fly more conventionaly. My boat partner got to 7 by lunch. We stopped and chatted as a group and I was surprised to find that the others had not done so well with only Russell having got 6 fish. After lunch the flotilla followed us back to our drifts and there was an ugly moment as Russell brought his boat in too close as Mark hooked a big fish. In trying to stop it running under Russell's boat he managed to break it off and was not even a little bit happy. Thankfully he immediately hooked another fish and finished off his limit.