Return To The Trout

 I still hadn't made my mind up where to go fishing on Thursday. I had a quick shufti though the river gauges and noticed a couple of the trout rivers had had a bit of a lift from the rain earlier in the week. I decide a trip up the valley of cheese may be a good idea. I checked the weather and seemed it would be a nice, if somewhat draughty, day. What didn't occur to me was that I would be trying to fly fish an easterly flowing river in a strong westerly.  At various points I passed signs proclaiming some road or other would be close from some point or other at some time or other. How you're supposed to read these signs on a sixty MPH road I don't know I suppose I could have made a nuisance of myself and slowed right down and annoyed everybody behind me. Besides there had been several signs claiming the were no white lines. There were plenty of very bright, newly painted white lines. So were the signs even relevant any more. It transpired the road was closed, but I knew the road that they claimed only went to a village in fact went very close to where I wanted to be. I eventually arrived late late afternoon and was surprised to see a couple of anglers fishing my club stretch. They would be the first I'd seen. A natter with one, Paul, found they they were staying nearby for three days as they weren't from these parts and that they'd had three fish between them in the morning. They'd struggled in the wind though.

I ventured Up to the top of the stretch as I thought it may be more sheltered. With the river nearly six inches up and falling it looked a lot healthier than last time I'd fished. I rigged up a duo and fished the faster water in some of the more sheltered spots for a while with no bites. I then tried some of the smother glides but didn't get an signs of fish. I worked my way back towards the car but things didn't get any better. A change of tactics were called for. As the wind had dropped a bit I decided to fish a couple of spiders through the faster riffles. Getting them to turn over was a bit tricky at times. One spot fishing downstream produced a couple of takes but I failed to connect properly. This is always a problem when fishing downstream. Near the bottom of the stretch and back to fishing upstream I  got a good solid take and a very nice 14" wild brown trout was in the net after a bit of acrobatics. No photo though as it jumped clear of the floating net while I was faffing with the phone. Wet hands and touch screens don't always cooperate. Another fish was lost not long after, throwing the hook as it cartwheeled about.

I thought I'd do a lot better after the river had lifted a bit. There was very little hatching apart from the odd small upright. I didn't see any fish rise at all. The two chaps fishing earlier had seen a couple of fish jump but that was it. It wasn't until I got home I realised that I hadn't taken many photos for some reason.