Mercury rising...

Once again i fished with Adam this weekend, and what a change 7 days can make! Instead of the freezing temps that greeted us the week before, once the sun was up the river was bathed in sunshine and we waded slowly and comfortably, the only problem was the lack of fish.......

We fished the first spot for an hour or so, it's a large crease in the flow, with a drop-off just below a weir that more often than not throws up a fish, but not this time, the river had a touch more colour in than last week but the level was slightly lower, it still looked good but there was nobody home...

Ten minutes in the car brought us to the second stretch. I'd tied a fly the night before that i was dying to swim, very similar to the successful one used last weekend(why change it?!) but slightly deeper and a little longer, I'll post a picture soon! While dodging sunken branches and large boulders we waded waist deep into the best spot to present the fly across the slacks at a nice angle to the flow, after stripping some line from the reel i put the fly out to the eddy on the right, i let the intermediate sink it a little then started to retrieve, strip........strip.........Bang! I answered the question with a strip-strike and lifted the rod, which hooped heavily for a second or two before the line went slack, hurrumph......

I carried on with the retrieve and just as the tip on the fly line came into view i started a slow hang, the fly was just below the surface when a Greeny-yellowy shape with black bars appeared and engulfed it! A good perch had just managed to get an 8ins Pike fly tied on a 6/0 in it's mouth, both Adam and i giggled while he thrashed about until the fly flew from his more than considerable cake hole.......

"He was big" i said to Adam, who replied "I'm not surprised eating fish that size!"

We saw him once more follow the fly, but he wasn't fooled twice.



After a slight move and Adam covering another area unsuccessfully we waded downstream to the slack that produced two fish for Adam last weekend, obviously it was my turn so i got myself into position, just upstream of and to the side that met with the main flow. I put the fly expectantly to one end of the slack but retrieved the fly without enquiry, and after half a dozen casts i thought i was facing a blank. "One more" i said as i dropped the fly an inch(ok 6) from the bank, one strip........ the was a flash, a boil and the rod was bent!

This short video taken by Adam shows what happened next...

Only an average fish of 7 or 8lbs but a spirited one, AND the blank was beaten! No stills of the fish as he leaped from my hand before Adam could take aim with the camera.....

We half heartedley tried a few more spots but the levels are proving tricky right now for a lot of the better areas, too much flow and not enough clarity, or depth. Difficult.

Its amazing the difference in temperature from last weekend, from -3 to +15! So whats it going to be next weekend? Rain is forecast this week, hopefully it wont dirty the river up, just top it up nicely, here's praying for a steady gentle pitter patter............


Cheers,


Graham

Winter at last?

Last weekend I'd arranged to fish the river for Pike with Adam, and even though the temp had been dropping all week the level looked just about right, on Thursday afternoon i got a text from him, "Looks like it might be a bit chilly on Saturday"........he was right!

One saving grace as regards fishing in winter is the lack of need for an early start, unless you're travelling far there's no point leaving in the dark, and dawn temps are generally not advantageous, and after some toast plus a coffee or two i bundled the gear into the boot of the car while the sheet of ice covering the windscreen slowly started to melt. As i scraped away Jenny from across the road appeared and started to de-ice her vehicle, "Your not going fishing are you!?", i explained that in an hours time I'd be wading waist high fishing for Pike and i got the usual response....."You must be mad!".....................Maybe, just a little...

Once i could see through the glass i headed for the river, stopping to pick up Adam on the way. We talked flies and guessed at the river's conditions on the way but neither of us expected it to be pushing through quite as much as it was. We got the waders on(after thawing wading boots on the exhaust, note to self: don't leave them in the greenhouse the night before a trip) and walked over the bridge to the nice slack just off the weir. We covered the drop off for a while but with the extra flow it was a little stirred up and neither of us felt too confident, back on the other bank the clarity was much better and within a couple of casts i had a take, the fish was on for a few seconds before dropping the fly, and this happened again the very next cast, I wasn't too worried as it was no monster at around 6lbs. Adam had a follow from possibly the same fish while i was playing with the camera before we upped sticks and headed to a different stretch.





Ten minutes later we were a little further upstream, another weir pool but this one is a touch more sedate and much more wadable, summer wading is a great advantage and remembering hollows, trenches and drop offs, no matter how small can make all the difference in winter when fish are looking to keep out of the now considerable flow and conserve energy..... or just ambush!

Adam said he'd leave his rod on the bank while we waded and i fished the pool as he might need to use the camera should i hook a large fish, my PB of 16lbs was taken here which adds a little more excitement to those first couple of casts as you cover the "dead" spots. I felt a tap on the first cast and on the second a boil behind the fly turned into a small jack of around 4lbs which bounced around angrily.


With no more evidence of fish we moved to access a far bank slack that normally holds a fish or two, i passed the rod to Adam to have a cast as it was surely his turn. He dropped the fly right on the edge of the overhanging foliage, let it sink a little before starting the retrieve, i was buggering around with the camera us per usual when Adam shouted he had a fish following before it turned last minute! Second cast and the fish was his! He did well to keep it out of the main current and after a few powerful surges and oily boils the fish was chinned, it must've been very close to double figures if it wasn't, a little lean but in mint condition!





After slipping the fly from the scissors and a couple of pictures it was time to send her back into the green where she soon disappeared form sight.

I said to Adam to have another cast as there can be more than one fish lying in this slack as it's a good spot to lay up, right next to two spots where the prey fish sit at this time of the season. Sure enough another fish was home, and soon Adam was bent into another toothy one!(why did i pass him the rod???) The fish was rather unimpressed with our interrupting his afternoon and begrudgingly came to hand, a shorter fish but thicker set and probably also around double figures, cant be bad eh?!


This fish really snaffled the fly, which needed easing from the back of the mouth through the gill cover, which was no drama, another beauty of large barbless single hooks! We took a couple of snaps before she was slipped back. It was at this point Adam found a rather deep slice through the tip of one of his fingers, while we took one shot the fish gave a classic mouth open rattle which is obviously when tooth and finger came into contact, it bled, and it bled some more, in fact so much blood poured from Adams poor finger there was a large red cloud in the edge on the slack, would it draw any more pike up into the slack we wondered?.......

With Adam now out of action due to a finger well elevated and pressure applied to i fished on in a couple of other spots but with no avail, some of the other lies had just a little too much water pushing through them to hold fish and other spots couldn't be waded to safely. We wandered around for a while swearing at the cormorants flying overhead and watching the frost burn away in the now warm sunshine before it was time to leave, driving home wondering if sub zero temps were going to be the norm for the next few weeks?......................I guess not!

Sunday was also chilly but nothing like Saturday, Monday was cold-ish and then Tuesday was 10 degrees warmer?! Its crazy, what the hell is going on?! We had a little rain today(Thursday) and the river's level looks to have risen slightly with it, has it coloured? will it be clear by the weekend? i guess we'll just have to wait and see.....................Fingers crossed!

P.S As a side note I've just got my hands on a Lamson Litespeed reel! I'm not usually a fan of the more modern looking reels with some of them looking more at home on a lowered Honda civic! But I've always like the Litespeed, and now, thanks to a bit of Christmas money i own one! I must say it's a very nicely made object of desire, i love the amount of thought that's gone into it's design, and it's now loaded with a new Wf5f, i cant wait to use it, watch this space!..........


Cheers,


Graham

2011 Retrospective...

And so we come to the end of another year, and although i hope to get to the river at least once during the crimbo/new year period it seems the right time for a quick look back at the last twelve months.

Spring was fantastic this year, we explored the upper reaches of a new river and found gold, with fins! Never before have i seen such sized wild brown trout in a beautifully untouched, overgrown and largely unfished little stream! I named the place "land of the giants", a well deserved title as the stream regularly gave us out sized fish, even a couple over 2lbs, what more could any fluff chucker want??!!!

We struggled to start with on my favourite tiny overgrown stream, but eventually got into some fish. This place isn't as quite as wide as "land of the giants", nor are the fish as big, but a prettier trout cannot be found, i doubt they exist, anywhere on the planet!

The coarse season started slowly also, due to the lack of rain the rivers were all low for pretty much the whole summer, even the Chub were hard to come by, paranoid never mind fearful... The low levels did however reveal one or two surprises including a lie that often held a Barbel or two, a nice shallow and shady gravel run between some reeds. The full story is in an earlier post but to say what happened after spotting those fish was a highlight of the year would be a huge understatement, I'm still not sure its sunk in.....

A few trips to the Cornish coast were very welcome throughout the summer, with the low river levels it was great to freshen up with some Bassing of the rocks and in the estuaries at dawn and dusk. A couple of sessions stick out, one dawn parade with friends where i hooked and pulled out of two good fish, well above average, either of which would probably have been a PB for me......sickening. The second fish took the fly as it came into view, i was retrieving it full pelt with both hands when it hit, turned 180 then headed straight back out taking with it all the line I'd just retrieved! Another fish followed a pound Pollack right to my feet as a played it, in the half light of dawn it looked 6lb, maybe bigger, I'll be back for all three fish next year!...

Another short session was in the middle of the day, in bright sunshine up a creek, "having a paddle", not what you'd call ideal conditions for Bass but this little corner holds a few small fish in amongst the huge amount of Mullet. This day was flat calm and i opted for a a size 10 Gammarus pattern fished on a floating line thrown by the 5wt, in the back of my mind i was hoping for a Mullet but to catch a couple of schoolies at close range on such gear was fantastic, it was kinda like Chubbing in a wide shallow river, extremely enjoyable...

Since the end of the summer i had a few more trips out on the river with a few surprise trout putting in an appearance, including a relative monster for a wild fish from a UK river! I took a trip over to the welsh coast with Adam from Rawson and Perrin but unfortunately the weather was not conducive to fly fishing so 8ft lure rods were the order of the day, and what a day it was! We both got into Bass and Adam managed a couple of other species, a gorgeous spot that i will definitely be returning to next summer, hopefully on a soft warm evening on a rising tide and the fly rod............mouth watering!

Autumn fishing has been tough, the rivers continued be stay low and the Pike haven't really played ball, we've had some rain now and hopefully things will improve once it's run off a little, which brings us back to now...

Hopes for 2012? As always I'd love to spend more time in the salt, it's just sods law i live next to the Bristol channel, one of the highest tidal ranges in the world causes more than a little "stirring up" which is not great for fly fishing, bait fishing can be excellent but the fish don't have much chance to eat your fly if they don't know it's there!....

I also look forward to getting back on the streams, after a winter of chucking huge 5/0 Pike flies around on the 8wt a little cane six footer is just the tonic, especially when transmitting the dashing around of a nice colourful wild brown trout!

So that's it for now, I'll wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy new year and leave you with 6 minutes of peace and quiet in the shape of a little small stream fishing.

Click HERE for the video and look forward to mother nature colouring the countryside in for us after a few months of drab-ness, get them fly boxes topped up, lines/reels and rods cleaned and it'll be here before you know it, honest(wink wink)...

Have a good one,


Graham

Fish shoal in the sky?

Just a quick post to share some footage i took last night of Starlings roosting, popped down with Adam from Rawson&Perrin at dusk to see the birds getting ready for bed, a great spectacle with the only downside of Adams car getting plastered in you know what!

Anyway click HERE for the video and enjoy the thumbprints in the sky

Cheers,


Graham

Quick Pike trip...

The opportunity arose to get to the river this morning, and even though it was still low i felt the chance should be capitalise upon!

The river still needs a good flush through to clear some of the weed that's dying back as well as the countless leaves that now fill ever eddy and slack, it was going to be an interesting couple of hours, but as least the sun was due to be out once it came up.

I decided to fish 2 separate stretches and target some of my favourite spots, with the low levels there wasn't much point in wandering to far from the usual holding areas. The car was parked in a mist filled valley and i made my way down to the river, the familiar sound of the weir confirmed more water was needed, especially this time of year. I put up the 8wt, standard 6ft of 25lb leader to 18ins of 25lb culminating with a "roach" of 6ins in length, i stepped into the shallows and soaked the fly, although not necessary with a fly made entirely of synthetics mine incorporates a zonker or two thus a quick soak softens it back into its sinuous state.

I cast the fly upstream into the edge of a slack, let it sink a little..... strip....strip....Bang! The fish ran out of the slack across the flow and straight for the far bank, he was nearly there too, then the hook pulled free... A take first cast cant be bad though eh?

The next spot is almost classic "crabtree", where a side stream runs in on the far bank, just on a right hand bend, there's a lovely crease and slack to fish through but this time they proved fruitless. After climbing back up the bank the high vantage point I'd avoided on approach so as not to spook any fish showed the little stream was heavily coloured, no doubt putting off any toothy ones from feeding there.

Last spot on this stretch is under a tree where a small overflow pipe dribbles in, this obviously attracts small fish and therefore predators. My first cast saw me drop the fly over the tip of branch that luckily gave me the fly back, second cast was spot on, the fly sank a foot or two before i started the retrieve, the fly was almost to the rod tip when it was taken, a small fish, not a Pike........a PERCH! A nice Perch came to had after a spirited fight, the 5/0 Pike fly lodged in the corner of it's mouth, somewhere around the 2lb mark and coloured only as river Perch are...


That was it for that spot so after a short 10mins drive i was at stretch number 2, again i elected to fish the usual go to spots and waded from pool to pool fishing through them as i wandered. The sun was out now, lighting half the valley, i fished "the dark side" with more confidence and was soon up to a favourite slack of mine. It's unfishable from the bank but with a pair of chesties, a good knowledge of the riverbed it can be reached! It's completely surrounded by trees, overhanging, fly hungry, you know the ones. A right handed caster like myself must cast in the opposite direction and drop the fly into the slack on the back cast, all the time keeping the rod low to the water to avoid the trees. I managed it. This time, and the usual turn of events ensued. The fly sank a little, strip.....strip.......BANG! A nice fish boiled at the surface then took off down stream, i stopped him, then as i turned him he leaped, the first of four tailwalking thrashes, always a brilliant spectacle that brings a smile to my face. As the fish neared i could see he was quite long but lean, the fly was right at the back of his mouth, seems a long time since i caught a Pike that needed the forceps, more often than not they're hooked in the scissors. Wonderful colours adorned his flanks, bright and yellowy, and after a couple of snaps he soaked me as he shot off downstream...



I fished on through a couple more spots then it was time to head home for lunch, on the whole a very pleasant couple of hours, nice to get the arm into the swing with the 8wt and heavier flies and of course the warmth of the sun always makes Pike fishing a more enjoyable pursuit, all we need now is some rain, again!

Cheers,


Graham

Long time no see...

Ive been away, not geographically, but away nonetheless...

Since my last post seasons have changed, well kind of! We've had some freakishly good weather for the time of year, this has been great for such pursuits as riding motorcycles but my local rivers have been next to lifeless. The fish have been pressured by the coarse anglers regardless of the low levels, and the poor finned ones have responded by becoming more paranoid than a stoner two days after losing his stash!

This lack of sport has kept me from my usual trips to the river, although i did get out after a little rain had spruced things up a little. Also a trip to the welsh coast was very much enjoyed although it was too rough for the fly rod unfortunately, taking Bass off the top on lures comes a close second to using fluff but it's no match, just what was required on the day.

He's a few pictures to keep things going while we wait for things to pick up, the rivers are still low and really need a good flush through to remove some weed and top the levels up, a few days steady light rain would be just the ticket, after all it'll soon be time for the toothy ones!

We'll start with a few from the excellent Frampton fair back in Sept:













And now it's up to the weather, i hope to have a trip out in the next few days to see if the Pike have woken up yet, AND more importantly if there's any water in the rivers! The clocks have gone back(why do we do this?) so this means even less time for fishing, every trip counts now, it could be snow melt and floods before we know it!...

Cheers,


Graham

Spinning sport ...

Ok so i know this place is Wildflies, and the topic is fly fishing but recently in Cornwall i fell on and snapped my spinning rod, having the choice of a few lures is handy when on the coast because the wind can always scupper your best plans to fly fish! So after a little reading on the WWW i ordered a replacement, i quite fancied something lighter, faster and a bit shorter so plumbed for the Savage gear XLNT 8ft 10-40g. It arrived yesterday and i was eager to test it, i headed to the river today but was unable to fish the area i wanted due to every peg being taken, on a Friday and there was no match???!!!!!

I headed to another of my favourite areas hoping to tangle with a Pike or two plus some Perch, it didn't happen but i enjoyed myself hugely and am impressed with the rod, i even managed a great Brownie in 6ins of water on a tiny Mepps!

I also got out yesterday joined by Ben Perrin of Rawson and Perrin, he had a couple of new stream rod tapers he wanted to test so we decided to get some sport and go out for the Dace, we had a great time taking a good number of fish on dries as well as nymphs fished up and downstream, we also took a couple of Grayling which was great to see them doing well despite all the predators...

Some pictures:









There's a chance I'll be out again tomorrow, maybe try for a Pike first to get a good bend in the lure rod, then perhaps I'll head back for some more light sport with the fly rod(thank god they say...)

It's Frampton Game fair on Sunday, if you're in the area i can recommend it as a great day out, I'll be there, lets hope the weather dries up a bit eh?

Cheers,


Graham