Friday 9 October 2015

Coarse Water Trout and Grayling

After an early start, firstly kick sampling on the upper river for the Riverfly Partnership and later joining a work party to remove some fallen trees and place the trunks as flow deflectors I wanted to show Eliot one of the coarse beats I fished earlier in the year with Ben. There are some good spots holding grayling on this part of the river and when the fly beats close at the end of the trout season it is somewhere we can continue to fish for grayling and coarse fish.

There is a large weir at the top of the beat that I wanted to try fishing a sculpin through, its not an easy weir to fish, very deep and wide but without a lot of flow. The only way to cover it really effectively is to start upstream and swing nymphs or a streamer around and then walk around and fish the bottom half from downstream. I tried the sculpin and Eliot fished a nymph after me, only one pull to the nymph so we moved on to our main quarry.

We fished up the known grayling run, there are also trout, dace and chub in this part of the river and I knew the top of the pool often holds several large chub.

We fished up this 50 yard run taking turns. Eliot got into a nice trout almost straight away and taking a steathy approach we both regularly got into fish as we worked up. I fished a french leader with a single Utah killer bug and Eliot fished a klink and dink setup. As expected it was mainly grayling we were picking up but I also caught a small dace as well as a few trout. As we neared the top of the pool I switched the killer bug for a size 14 ptn with a 3mm copper tungsten bead. I cast again and my indicator immediately shot away.

Initially I thought I had hooked into one of the large chub that frequent the pool but it turned out to be a large trout of 17", in great condition too.


By the time we'd finished fishing this short section I had caught 5 trout 9 grayling and a dace and Eliot had caught a similar number. Just goes to show that slow and steady progress is sometimes the most productive.

We moved on and after fishing another tricky weir pool where Ben caught this fish back in July

A spectacular 18 1/2 inch fish Ben caught on this beat in July

we moved on to another gravelly run frequented by grayling. I left Eliot fishing whilst I answered a call of nature. When I got back he'd had one small grayling. I suggested he cast further across the flow and no sooner had he done so than a large fish rolled over his klink. A spirited fight ensued and I was concerned he might lose the fish by cutting the line on some large boulders. If I'm netting a fish for someone I generally prefer them to bring it to me and I just hold the net. However in this case I saw an opportunity to get the net under the fish before it could run again and took it. I won't post the picture showing the look on Eliot's face but suffice to say it was one of shock, this was certainly a PB fish for him measuring 18"


We moved up to another run where large trout have been caught, no fish there today but we fished into the pool ahead. As Eliot fished into the slow water above the pool I stopped him to point out a kingfisher, hoping it would land so we could get a good look, but unfortunately it didn't fancy the look of us and flew off. Eliot looked back to his fly and it was gone so he lifted the rod and was rewarded with this cracking 15" grayling.


Another PB for him as it happens. By this point we were starting to get cold and quickly fished through another couple of pools before heading to the car. Despite being October I was able to fish in short sleeves and only really got cold as the sun started to go down.

We both left very happy and it was nice to think that the river was rewarding us for the hard work we put in during the morning.

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