From: 07/01/2015
To: 08/04/2015
Type of Water: Freshwater
Species: Rainbow trout
While I had a ball of a time in the autumn, I had a slow patch through July when it comes to fly fishing. There was a lot of work, a family holiday and some time under general anaesthetic thrown in there. Come to think of it there are one or two parts I would have like to have had covered by that “full general”, but that aside, I didn’t fish much.
Being winter, it is of course stillwater season here. And it is cold and windy, but with a pale watery sunshine, that would warm you if the wind stopped. And then only when the frost has meleted.
I had two hours out on a small piece of water over which the owners house faces, and I ended up feeling more as though I was part of his noisy garden party than anything else. My colleague got a fish with a big kype that wasn’t far off f View more...While I had a ball of a time in the autumn, I had a slow patch through July when it comes to fly fishing. There was a lot of work, a family holiday and some time under general anaesthetic thrown in there. Come to think of it there are one or two parts I would have like to have had covered by that “full general”, but that aside, I didn’t fish much.
Being winter, it is of course stillwater season here. And it is cold and windy, but with a pale watery sunshine, that would warm you if the wind stopped. And then only when the frost has meleted.
I had two hours out on a small piece of water over which the owners house faces, and I ended up feeling more as though I was part of his noisy garden party than anything else. My colleague got a fish with a big kype that wasn’t far off five pounds though. When the whooping and cheering died down we left. Then last week-end I thrashed a windy lake up near Giants Castle for five hours without seeing a thing.
Enough of me. What I did do this last week-end, was to get a peek inside the fly-box of a veritable cormorant. Not his fly box in fact, but his fly patch. That is more telling. In there were the flies that he used to whip the pants off many a competitor in the Wildfly Corporate Challenge two weeks back! So let’s dive around in there for a bit.
He had some dragons in about #8. They were coloured like GRHE’s, but they were wearing a bit thin, and their red underwear was showing. Classic dragon shape. Burnt nylon eyes if I remember correctly.
Then there were a number of small black patterns. In fact, as far as I could see they were Black Woolly Worms straight out of the late John Beams’ flybox. Those flies were about #12 or #10.
Added to that were some small (#14) San Juan Worms. They had been fished tandem with a rather robust looking damselfly nymph. Perhaps robust is the wrong word. Rotund. That is to say, fat for a damsel. More like Rob Karssing’s Kamberg nymph.
And what else. Oh yes. A fly that was allegedly a Pancora Crab. I say allegedly because it looked like a nymph to me. A sort of GRHE with a short yellow and orange marabou tail.
So there you have it. A fairly simple selection, but knowing the man in question they would have been fished on a long (make that VERY long) leader, and retrieved very slowly, on a floating line.
As to other peoples success or otherwise: Lots of otherwise! Lots of news of blank days, with the odd day blessed with just one or two fish. And of those most were 4 or 5 pounds. Sounds like winter doesn’t it? Well, we had a cold snap (with good rain and snow) 2 weeks back, and it has made it as cold as it gets right now, even though it is August already. But watch this space. In 4 weeks the rivers will be officially open (albeit probably still too low to be exciting) , and it will be spring.
Right now that is hard to imagine. But be that as it may, I am going to sign off and go tie myself some river nymphs.
