2008 Fly Season

The BIG weekend of the year approaches. With over 50 of the worlds best fly tiers in attendance (their words) Held at the Trentham Gardens Exhibition centre from 9 yo 4 30 each day over the weekend of 1st/2nd november, BFFI is a great day or two out for anyone with the slightest intertest in fly fishing. The stands and stalls offer everything from top end holidays to cheap and cheerful odds and ends. The Lecture theaters are always full of interesting and informed people giving talks on fishing fly tying and new tackle. I am helping out on the "any Questions" Fly Tying row again this year and look forward to meeting someone who has actually read this blog!
IF you have any interest at all in fly tying come along. See you there
I will be posting photos and news from the show on my website
www.fishingclass.co.uk

Well another season draws to a close and with the falling leaves come the realisation that I'm not only another year older but also have failed to fulfill the majority of my plans for 2008. I apologise to anyone who thought this blog would be a regular and imformative piece, I'm afraid the realities of life have resulted in me ignoring it for long periods and forgetting to add detaiuls of my trips. I ended the competition season with 4 trips to bewl in a 4 week period, Starting with the Grand Max floating line and the first police match, both of which I hjave actually written about and ending up with a "Fishing for Fun" day out and the final police match. The FFF day was a disaster, Galeforce winds and bright sunny conditions made presentation a nightmare. I actually caught 2 fish one of which a 3 .14 grown on fish was probably the most perfect fish I have ever caught in terms of proportion, colouration and sheer animal beauty. My Boat partner managed one fish and from the additional 10 anglers only one more fish was taken. The following Wednesday saw us fishing the final police match. With the series all but decided I was fishing for pride and started out near the dam with a floating line, a white fritz lure on the point took three fish for me by lunch time. At lunch eveyone else was struggling although Mark had found some fish rising and the start of a sedge hatch. After lunch he quickly took advantage of these fish and caught three on dry sedges including a 4lb plus fish. I struggled all afternoon finally getting two more fish at 4 45pm on a cormorant. We decided to stay till 6pm as it was a lovely evening and of course, caught nothing at all in the final hour. Mark ended up with 4 fish and his big fish pushed him into first place by 2 ounces.
I still have a few weeks left at Flanchford and am looking forward to the fly fair over the first weekend of October. Once thats over its Grayling time and I hope to hit the Salisbury and District waters this winter. Lots of new stuff has been added to my web site and I now have several new items of tying material in stock.
Tight lines to all

Another police match, This time a change from the published venue of Grafham. We had odd numbers and Mark elected to fish alone while I fished with Rob Leighton and Janice and Russell paired up.
I returend to the area were I'd caught last wedensday and found that the fish were still there but the method was no good. Rob started pulling boobies and blobs on a Cortland Blue line and getting follows but no fish. I was still on a floater and put similar flies on. Almost immediately I got the same thing, follows and boils on virtually every cast but no takes. Finally at the end of one drift I put my rod down while turning round to start the engine and a fish took the static fly. The light dawned and next drift we fished the boobies really slowly and took another fish. When I got the third Rob decided to come up to a floater to but before he could change a fish took his point fly. With the score at 3 - 1 he decided to stick it out on the Cortland Blue, a decison that I think cost him a lot of fish. I took a further 4 by lunch time, almost all taking while the fly was static or on the first pull.
After lunch I went out along and Rob teamed up with Mark. I quickly took the eighth fish in exactly the same way and left them to it with a 4hr time bonus to add to my 15lb 7oz bag I was well pleased with the day.

My favourite competition, The Floating Line only competition run by Grand Max. As last years top rod I knew i was going to get some stick if I didn't catch and being paired up with Bewl expert Mick Dwyer was a good start. The rumour mill told us that static or slow retrieves with a team of hoppers, boobies and daddies was the way to go. I started with two hoppers and a daddy on the top dropper and last years match winning fly, a size 12 yellow booby on the point. Right from the off I got takes and pulls but nothing I could hit. Micky was fishing in much the same way but without the booby. He got no interest at all! After 30 minutes he changed to a booby on the point and promptly statrted to catch. We stayed in pretty much the same area for most of the morning and it became apparent that the whole reservoir had turned on and fish were being caught all over and on a variety of flies. This competition has a compulsory lunch period and so we came in to find that several anglers had already had their limits of 8 fish. Mick had 7 by then to my 5. I included a really nice grown on fish of 3.12 in my bag but was still well down on the overall leader. My team were struggling with 3 fish being the best other bag and one blank at lunch.
After a great meal and a beer or two we returned to the area by the moorings of the General Belgrano and Mick quickly got his limit and 4 hours of time bonus which worked out at an extra 8lbs. I caught my 6th fish and all of sudden the fish stopped feeding. For the next three hours I had very little interest and it was quiet all round, finally at 4.30 we moved to the far side of the dam and I quickly caught my last two fish on nymphs some 3 feet down. I ended up with 17lb 6oz for my 8 fish which was a heavy limit on the day as most people had found some smallish (1lb 4oz) stockies were the most likely to take the fly. Team wise we came nowhere but it was good fun and fished in the spirit as all matches used to be before the introduction of serious prizes.

You wouldn't believe it but there was actually a break in the weather this week, It lasted about an hour and a half which coincided with a passing visit to Flanchford where the water was in surprisingly good condition with a few inches of visibility on the bottom two lakes. Plenty of fish showing but not actively feeding so I turned to a small damsel nymph. After a series of plucks and taps i finally hooked a fish and it fell off. Ten minutes later as I hooked and lost a very strong fish of around 3lbs which fell off as I went to net it. See the fly pattern at my website www.fishingclass.co.uk

Welcome if you have been directed here from www.fishingclass.co.uk
This blog has unfortunately been neglected for some time due to a family illness. Hopefully normal service will resume later this monht. Meanwhile, thanks for stopping by and I look forward to seeing you in the future.

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.