Not As Planned

On Sunday with the one beck up and coloured I headed to the next valley along where it's beck was clear and fishable. It would also be out of the expected strong winds, but not the showers. I'd fished this beck further upstream a long long time ago. With a bit of stealth there are some very eager little browns to be caught. I parked up in the parking spot which is next to one of the club ponds, so decided to have a wander around. There was the occasional rise and plenty of rainbows milling about. Some where quite large.

Back at the car things started to unravel. I thought I'd put a five foot and a seven foot rod in the boot. Instead I had a seven foot and a ten foot rod. Further more the reel bag with the three weight reel only had the spool, but I did have a reel with a four weight line. By the time I'd got my waders on the sunshine had disappeared and the first shower of the day started. I made a cuppa and sat in the car contemplating. I decided to put the four weight on the three weight ten foot rod and have a go for a couple of rainbows in the pond on dry fly.

 

It took a while to get used to this rod being over-lined. In fact I never really got used to it. The rod really didn't like it, except for very short casts. The gusty wind wasn't helping. The first fly on was a retirer sedge. I thought a big fly would have them eager to rise. The big fish weren't eager at all. They just steadfastly ignored the fly swimming along as if nothing had happened. Even a clumsy cast with everything slapping down on the water didn't seem to spoke them. The greylag geese arguing didn't worry them either. Eventually a smaller fish I'd seen rising close to the bank took the fly but I had too much slack in the system and failed to gather it up on the strike.

 

With the fish taking little interest in the retirer I changed to another large fly, a march brown jingler. This seemed to do the trick. I cast it towards one of the large fish, but one of the small ones shot up and grabbed it. This time I connected properly and after a bit of a all-over the place fight it was in the net. Not a pristine fish but good fun on the light rod. I spent some more time flinging the fly about at various fish only to be ignored before the rain started again. I retired back to the car for elevenses.

During elevenses I had a long hard stare at the fly box. I had thought of fishing some sort of emerger but there were none to be seen. Probably because they were in the other box I hadn't brought with me. Instead I put on a small chenille daddy. This gave me an idea. I would try fishing it in the beck in a sort of euro nymphing style with just the leader out of the rod tip. This proved rather more complicated than I'd imagined. The wind was now stronger and the gusts would just lift the fly from the water and deposit it in a briar or similar. Nor was there a great deal of room and I began to fear for the rod tip. On my way back up the bank to the pond I spotted some frog spawn lying on some damp moss. I suppose with all the rain it had managed to keep damp. Even so i gathered up what I could and transferred it to the pond.

 

The gust of wind were now getting stronger and their direction was a tad unpredictable as the wind was buffeted about by the trees. This was shown when I cast down the bank to a fish and the whole lot was dumped on the bank by a gust. A cast towards an island produced a take from the smaller but very brightly coloured fish. Unfortunately it flipped the hook close to the net. really I should have stepped into the lake rather than struggle down the bank with a short handled river net.  A change to a John Storey after the daddy failed to attract anything more. A cast close to the island again produced another fish which after a brief battle was in the net.

The rain then started again and the wind was getting silly so I called it a day. An enjoyable day in the end, despite the dodgy start. It's a long long time since I fished a small trout lake and I've never fished one as clear and shallow as this one. It looks like I may have to have another go some time, but back to running water next.