Nearly a First

I wandered up and down a mile or so of river on Sunday morning looking for signs of fish. In two hours I spotted half a dozen very small trout, not much bigger than minnows. The previous days storms had had very little effect on the river apart from causing the fish to sulk.

After a spot of lunch I moved to a different stretch of the river. As I wandered downstream I spotted one or two fish rising here and there. Starting with the reliable John Storey soon produce a fish that I'd spotted rising. Wetting my hand in the river ir appear to be noticeably warmer than previous weeks. By now a variety of insects were fluttering about and a change to a foam dun produced  fish readily. Despite the abundance of insect life the fish seemed to be shoaled up and I would often take two or three from the same swim before spooking the rest. While other stretches seemed devoid of fish even though there were plenty of insects about.

At one point a hare kindly posed for me while it waited for me to get my camera (phone) out. The moment I pointed the phone at it, it was of stopping a hundred yards away.

By tea time the insect life had all but disappeared on this stretch. I had a look at a couple of stretches, but they looked pretty lifeless so decided to head of home. I decided to make a slight detour via the Rye and was surprised to see several fish rising to a good hatch of mayfly. So, hoping I could finally catch a trout on dry from this stretch. Watching the water it was noticeable that the fish were taking the duns or the spent insects. I tried a DHE first, but couldn't really see it as I was facing into the evening sun so changed to a black klnkhamer. After a couple of casts it disappeared and in came a decent sized, but rather scruffy dace. I took a couple more identical ones before wandering along the river. A couple more dace came to hand before I spotted a couple of trout porpoising mid stream. Second cast, and I was in. This was not one of the fish I'd spotted, it was much bigger. Not the sort of thing my little 7' rod was intended for. Eventually I had it heading back downstream towards me. As it swam past I wondered if I'd hooked a sea trout or salmon, it was very large and silvery. It continued downstream seemingly unaware it had been hooked. A 3lb tippet doesn't allow for a huge amount of pressure to be applied. A quick leap as if to show me it's size. The pink flash confirming it to be a large rainbow about 7-8lb. A another acrobatic display and everything went slack, it had thrown the hook. Oh well, I really wanted a WBT to be my first dry caught fish from here anyway.

 










I've taken several 'bows, escapees from a fish farm I believe, on lures, maggots and even luncheon meat, but nothing approach the size of the beastie I'd just lost. The two smaller trout I'd seen porpoising early had disappeared. The only fish I could see risng were a large shoal of dace, now taking the spent mayflies. I do hope they'll stick around until autumn when they should be back to shiny bars of silver.