Back to the Moors

After a trip to a Dales river yesterday it was up to The Moors today. The weather forecast was not good. We were back to a northerly wind, so two fleeces were loaded into the car. The drizzle nearly all the way there didn't heighten my optimism. As expected the wind and rain had knocked petals and catkins from the trees, so there was quite a bit of debris floating down. I started with a gold head nymph on the point with a pearly bloa above and a black magic on the top dropper. Apart from foul hooking a little fry, that produced nothing. 

While distracted by a Lapwing doing that injured wing distraction display they do, the rod was nearly pulled from my hand, but no contact was made. A recast to the same area produced a similar sharp tug with out any contact. After three or four more tugs like this I had a little trout to hand, taken on the black magic. In all this time the only rises I'd seen were fish nudging petals or catkins about. Casting to the rise never produced anything. I wondered whether I should have a white fly in my box for these occasions.

A bit further on I bump into another angler who'd managed one fish on a small butcher, having seen a fish casing some fry. As he said, we're into May now there should be flies hatching, but he hadn't seen any at all. He had  similar problems to me on ha last three outings. Fish seeming to hit the flies hard, but making no contact. We wished each other luck and headed back they way we'd come.

I'd decided to pack in early, but as I headed back to the car I spotted a few rises in a pool. After cutting the gold head off I cast the two remain flies to a rise and contacted with a better fish a second cast produced a similar fish before bumping the next one off. The sun then disappeared again and the rises stopped. Further on I saw something I'd never seen before, a Kingfisher on the ground. I approached it slowing thinking it was injured. Clearly it wasn't as it took off and shot past me, upstream. Don't know why it was on the ground, I've only seen them land on branches or fence posts.

My final encounter with nature was half a dozen little bunnies. I managed to get quite close to them before they jumped down one of several holes each was close to.