2008 Fly Season

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.