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 us who prefer to 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 open 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 while 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 lovely 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.
