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.