Good Sign For The Future

With Sunday's original plans thwarted by the rapidly rising rivers, those that get their water from the dales, I headed to one that gets it's water from the moors, in search of grayling. It looked in fine fettle as I drove over he bridge and parked up. There was little sign of life  as I wandered down to the downstream end, so opted for a small gold head GRHE with a pink collar. This produced quite an array of twigs and leafs dredged up from the bottom.

After a half hour or so I found a few fish rising in a short glide. After the nymph was ignored I decided a dry fly was called for. A change to a small emerger type pattern produced a few splashy rises. Suspecting small dace I changed to a size 20 IOBO, which produced the tiniest little grayling I've ever caught. In fact I thought I'd snagged another leaf at first. The next few casts produced a series of missed takes. I reckon I was hitting 1 in 6 takes. After taking 3 fish every thing went quiet, so I moved on.

A root through the fly boxes produced a size 18 plume fly. The hit rate to this was a bit higher at 1 in 3. As I moved upstream I was able to take 3 or 4 fish from each glide before putting the down. All of them were about the same size, absolutely tiny, but this has got to be a good sign for the future proved the don't move upstream to the more exclusive stretches.