Thursday 30 April 2015

Yorkshire Day 1 - The 5 Rivers Challenge

Day one of my Yorkshire adventure was a day attempting trout from 5 rivers with Danny (Pinkshrimp) I won in the Monnow Rivers Trust auction. I had been looking forward to fishing with Danny having spoken to others who have fished with him and read his forum posts, the aim of tackling 5 rivers in day made it all the more exciting. Danny had pre-warned me that the rivers were very low and could be tricky but I was still hopeful of catching a few fish.

I arrived at Danny's at 09:00, he was standing on his doorstep with all his gear with a cup of tea in hand. After a friendly greeting Danny necked the last of his tea, put his mug inside the door and we set off for the first river.

River 1

We arrived at the river and set up the nymphing rods that we would use all day. I used a french leader and two small nymphs, a size 16 copper head pheasant tail on the dropper and a size 14 olive hares ear with a gold head on the point.


We set off up the river, this was one of the first pools. It took me a while to get my eye in. Danny let me have the lions share of the fishing on the first river but had a few casts himself too.


It wasn't long before we had some action.


I had a fine 13" grayling, as with almost all of the fish in this river it took the copper head ptn.



These flies have produced a lot of great fish for me and I have a lot of confidence in them, simple but deadly. It wasn't long before we got into some trout too.



This was the best from this river at 14", as you can see I was pretty chuffed about catching it. Things were shaping up to be an excellent day.

The last deep pool on this river was tricky to tackle from below and yielded no fish despite both of us trying.


But Danny managed to land one after hooking and losing two others from the same pool from upstream.


In total we managed 9 trout and 6 grayling out of this river in about an hour and a half. Great start to the challenge.

River 2

We moved on to the second river. This was to produce the best fishing of the day. As before the best fish came from the bottom of the beat in the first pool we came to. I had a cracking fish of 15" from this tiny pool just by the tree stump.


The fish


The fishing was fast and furious all the way along and I'm afraid I somewhat forgot about the camera after this, I was simply having too much fun. We were taking it in turn catching one fish each and then switching by this point but there wasn't much time between fish to think about doing much else. I did manage one good shot showing how beautiful this little stream is.


And the fish no less stunning.


I came across this nest full of eggs too, quite vulnerable to flooding by the look of its location. No sign of the adult birds either so I hope it wasn't abandoned. Moorhen or Coot I expect although I'm not sure.



All told we managed 40 trout and 6 grayling out of this little river with the best a 15" trout.

Rivers 3 and 4

Rivers 3 and 4 by comparison were not in such good form. We were not sure why there was such a stark contrast between rivers only a few miles apart but a brief jaunt onto river 3 (conscious now of time as we'd spent so long enjoying the first two rivers) yielded one small trout for Danny whilst I managed only to fall flat on my face wading downstream to the car. Both rivers were very low and in need of some rain, which was probably the main factor in how they fished.

An hour and a half on river 4 yielded two for Danny and one for me.

In any case that was how we ended the day. We had no time to fish the 5th river, the light was going and we were both pretty tired. I haven't mentioned before how hard Danny works when he's fishing, he doesn't hang about, moving quickly between fish holding spots and fishing through at pace. I found it hard to keep up at times, especially as the wading was quite challenging and my studs were not good enough.

What a start to my time in Yorkshire. Danny was a great host and I had a great time. The number and quality of the fish we caught in the first two rivers was amazing. I'm grateful to Danny for the offer of a return visit, something I will definitely take him up on.

Thursday 23 April 2015

Flies for Yorkshire

I'm off to Yorkshire on Sunday for three days fishing. Really looking forward to the adventure. In preparation I've been checking through my fly boxes for gaps. Being early in the season there aren't many; I have plenty of spiders, nymphs and dries; but I've lost one or two Klinkhamers and not tied many over the winter, so I thought I ought to stock up.

I haven't been entirely faithful to Hans van Klinken's original recipe but this version works well for me.

Hook: Daiichi 1160 S14
Thread: 30D GSP
Underbody: White Floss
Dubbing: Fly Rite Extra Fine Light Tan
Post: Aero Dry Wing White
Thorax: Peacock Herl Dyed Black
Hackle: Grizzle




After tying enough for the trip I had a play about with an emerger pattern. Andrew (Buzzerfan on FFF) kindly sent me some olive dyed heron herl some time ago which I have used to tie klinks with before but I decided to try a paraloop fly using the herl and the daiichi klink hook. I'm quite pleased with the result. I also intend to tie this smaller when I get the right hooks as I think a 16 is too big in this hook pattern for what I want. Anyway, here's the recipe and the pictures.

Hook: Daiichi 1160 S16
Thread: 30D GSP
Abdomen: Heron herl dyed olive
Rib: Flybox micro wire 0.09mm chartruse
Hackle: Grizzle dyed yellow
Thorax: Fly Rite Extra Fine Rusty Olive


Roll on the weekend!

Sunday 19 April 2015

First Day on the Club Water

So, I thought it was time I started a blog. Mainly as a record for myself but hopefully it will prove somewhat interesting for others too.

I have fished for many years, coarse fishing as a teenager and, after a fairly lengthy break from all fishing, fly fishing on stillwaters. In the last two years I have been venturing onto rivers, something I have really enjoyed and this year for the first time I have joined a club with a good amount of river about an hours drive from home. I'm also a keen photographer (although that doesn't necessarily mean I'm especially good at it), hence the name of the blog.

I fished this river last year as a guest with Ben Lupton of inpursuitofspotties fame and had an excellent day including catching the fish that features in the title bar of this page.

Today I went to the river for my club induction and again fished with Ben.

We started fishing upstream of where we met, Ben fishing upstream nymph whilst I opted for a duo with a large klink with a bead head below. A cold and blustery upstream wind made casting with accuracy quite tricky and being somewhat rusty a few tangles and caught foliage resulted.

Very little was hatching out and we didn't see any rises for most of the morning, nevertheless we picked up a few fish, one trout and one grayling a piece.


In the afternoon despite the forecast for rain things actually brightened up a little with the sun breaking through the clouds from time to time. As well as providing some welcome warmth, we were quite chilly by this point having expected it to be warmer, this also led to a fairly decent hatch of large dark olives.

LDO

This specimen I picked up out of the flow and photographed when I got home. This encouraged some fish to start rising and we spent some time working a pool with several rising fish. Those at the bottom half of the pool turned out to be grayling and we managed 3 between us before moving on, all on dries. Ben's Barbour Paraduns working well for me. We thought there was at least one good trout at the top of the pool from the look of the rise but we couldn't tempt it and moved on. Ben caught a good trout of around 14" a little further along, again on a dry and I picked up a further fish a little way up.

Ben was running short of time by this point so we walked the rest of the beat to get an idea of the lay of the land for next time. There were a lot of fish in the top section and we wished we had time to fish through. After that we went back to the cars. Ben headed off and I walked downstream to check out the lower beat. This was the one I fished last year with Ben but I wanted to see it again to remind myself. I saw some fish rising in a slow pool but couldn't see what they were rising to, something small certainly, so I opted for a size 20 black paraloop gnat. First cast it was nailed by a nice chub.


I fished on as I'd seen a trout in the pool as I passed. Catching this one seemed to put the rest down so I moved on. I finished walking the beat, certainly less fish in this section and I didn't fish anywhere else, being quite tired by this point I called it a day. All in all I was pleased with my first day on the club water. Looking forward to the next trip, although that will have to wait for a couple of weeks as I'm off to Yorkshire next weekend to fish the Wharfe with Invicta FFC and try to tackle five rivers in a day with Danny (Pinkshrimp) having won an auction lot on the Monnow Rivers Trust auction over the winter. Hopefully plenty of action to report on next week. I'll finish with another photo from today, just because I like it and I haven't used it yet.