Good Grief, A Trout

The weather forecast for Friday was not bad, or good. Intermittent/ isolated showers, this means it'll rain on me but there'll be sunshine over there. The river had been up a foot on Tuesday, but dropped back down nine inches by Friday. There was still a bit of colour in it, not as bad as I'd expected though. The ewes and their lambs had been turned out into the field on the opposite bank and were making a right racket. I spent the morning throwing streamers about with out an success. As lunch time came around the skies darkened, but swept over with only a bit of drizzle.

After lunch I headed to a shallower section to fish the duo. Heading to wards the river hail started to come down. The horses  trotted to shelter under the trees, the cattle and sheep just lay in the open ignoring it. After a while the sun came out and my nice black jacket went from being nice and snug to an oven with the sun on my back. With the sun came a hatch of sedge, but no sign of trout looking up. I'd worked my way to the top of the stretch when it started to darken again and a steady drizzle of the extra wet type started. I really was rather wet by the time I got back to the fence post I'd left my waterproof on, and forgotten about.

As I was putting the waterproof back on a fish rose near the bank. I licked the rig just upstream of the rise and almost immediately the the dry sedge shot upstream. A chunky 10" trout had grabbed the nymph. Apart from one leap when I struck it came in with out much of a struggle. By now the rain had turned to sleet. Wrestling the phone with wet hands I somehow managed to alter the settings. This meant the flash went. I abandoned any more prodding about with the phone, returned he fish and headed back to the car. First trout of the season. Sadly there's no video of it either as I had zipped up the jacket and aha been videoing the inside of the coat.

 

As I headed back to the car there was a long loud rumble of thunder. I sat in the car with a cuppa looking for some sign of brightness but it didn't look like it was forthcoming so made my way home. The combination of sleet and loose chippings on the road newly surfaced made dodging a stray peacock more stressful than it should have been. Despite the fact it had hardly rained at home it had persisted on and off for much of the evening where I was fishing.