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3 Trout

4 trout

There was very little breeze today and further down the west bank towards the visitor area and the dam I found very little access. I had decided to pack up before two o'clock. Metcheck had been right about the very low wind speeds. Ah well.

Arrived at the river early (8am - early for me, anyway) to find the river up 3 inches overnight and very quiet. Apart from a nice 1.5lb fish caught in about 8 inches of water on a cdc olive emerger, that was about it until late morning when it got noticeably warmer. That seemed to trigger reasonable hatches of brook duns, olive uprights, BWOs, yellow mays and even a few true mayflies. The trout responded and a further 11 fish came to the cdc pattern with the inevitable similar number lost, the best being 18" (2.5lb). Strangely, the river went quite murky at around 3.30pm while it was dropping, which put the fish down even when some flies were still coming off.

12 Trout

A lovely day fishing the dry fly. I must try and contain my excitement whenever a trout rises to my fly. A lot more fish would have come to the net. Various olives hatching on and off most of the afternoon. Despite best efforts only landed 2. Thankyou to the owners for their kind gesture of goodwill on the day and allowing fishing on this scenic stretch of river.

2 Trout

1 Trout

1 Trout

1 Trout

It fished really well - 12 brown trout all on dry flies. Some scattered mayfly hatches at various times, including a lot of yellow mayfly but strangely those were ignored - mostly caught on smaller size 16 ad 18s of three classic patterns: Lunn's Particular, Grey Duster and a Greenwell's Glory variant. However for much of the day most of the fish weren't on the mayflies - there were large numbers of tiny black flies, probably reed smuts and they were hitting those hard. Caught four of them on a size 20 Black Gnat at those times, fished on a very long and fine leader. Downside of that was that I lost one bigger fish on the take, probably had a wind knot in the line as it was quite windy and they often needed long casts with trees around - checked the tippet occasionally but obviously not often enough! Still a great day's fishing and they were a good stamp of fish - all between 9 and 14" and in great condition, two thirds of them in the 12-14" range. Thanks for a lovely day out - great fishing on a beautiful stretch of river.

12 Trout