My intention was to explore a beat I'd not fished before, but first I'd have a fish on a beat I had fished before. There was a noticeable absence of fly life, apart from the usual black stuff, so I put on a small Klinkhammer to start with. The odd fish I could see rising to the black stuff just ignored it. A mayfly fluttered past at one point. then some olives. Although I didn't see anything rising to them I changed to a Foam Dun. Not that this excited the fish in any way. Nor did a small daddy.
A change to a Double Badger did the trick. An 8" WBT was straight on it and quickly in the net. As I was bout to move on another fish rose and a couple of casts later a slightly smaller WBT was in the net. I moved up to the last couple of pools and managed similar sized fish out of each.
After a late lunch I headed down another track to access the beat I'd not fished before. I had a brief natter with a local farmer who reckoned you didn't see as many fish in the beck as you used to years ago and told me to avoid one of the fields as it had some highly inquisitive calves in it. Really there was no point in me enter the filed as it didn't provide any access to the beck.
The first thing I found when I got to the beck was a rather lovely pool. I sat and watched for a few minutes but nothing rose, despite there being plenty of black stuff fluttering about. Wandering further downstream it was clear that access was limited but there were plenty of nice looking pools. I did see a couple of rising fish but they'd carefully positioned themselves so as the prevent cast to them. Even the good old bow-and arrow, or hook-in-thumb cast wasn't really on. I then came across a stand of Himalayan Balsam. I immediately went in to balsam bashing mode. A couple more small stands were found further downstream and ripped up. This cost me an hours fishing time, but I'm just unable to leave the stuff to grow.
With fishing time curtailed I made my way back upstream looking for rising fish of which I found a few. Access,as i said, was a bit limited. remains of a barbed wire fence close to the water. Sheer banks and water of unknown depth didn't help either. Most of the casting was the bow-and-arrow style from the bank. I managed to produce three 6" WBT like this, but spooked even more.
Eventually I reached the railway pool where fish were now rising. Several casts with the double badger produced nothing. A change to an Elk Hair Caddis, as I seen a couple of stonefly about, produced a fish straight away, which felt better than anything I'd caught earlier. Somehow I managed to bump it off. I sat and waited to see if I'd ruined the pool completely. Thankfully a fish started to rise again. A horrible cast splashing the fly hard onto the water produced a rise straight away. A rather stunning 10" WBT eventually graced the net. While I played this fish another was rising at the head of the pool. It ignored my first cast, which I think was a bit short anyway. A second attempt had the fly snagged in a tree stump behind me. The third cast, however, landed right on the money. Unfortunately what felt like and even bigger fish managed to shed the hook.
That was it. I sat another 15 minutes but nowt else rose. I had a few speculative casts with out success.
I don't know if I'd done any better if I hadn't been sidetracked by the balsam, but I'll be back. I suspect wading it will be fun. It'll probably mean a lot of back tracking as some of the fallen trees don't look easily passable and the banks are rather tall and sheer in places. All good fun really.
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