June 2019
Fished Thursday evening. There were a few other anglers at the water and a couple of other season ticket holders arrived whilst I was tackling up. They both commented on the quality of the fishing so far this season, which is something most anglers agree on this year.
I set up my 6wt rod planning on not fishing lures. I fished mini lures last weekend in the club competition and somehow managed to lose 8 fish on the trot. I have no idea how, and I have never done this before, but others fishing that day also lost more fish than normal.
The wind was pushing up towards the north shore and there were a couple of fish taking near the surface near the shed, so I started there, fishing a couple of spider patterns on droppers with a small booby on the point. The wind was perfect for this pushing left to right and putting a nice bow in the line. No retrieve was necessary as the wind was moving the flies itself in an arc.
After just a couple of casts a fish hooked itself against the bow in the line and a few minutes later the first fish of the evening was landed, having taken the top dropper.
This was very quickly followed by three other similar fish, all on the droppers. At one point I had a double hook-up for a few seconds before the second fish snapped a dropper, luckily leaving the other fish still attached. The only problem I seem to have with this method is that it can be prone to tangles with the floating boobly often tangling around one or other of the droppers during the battle. Tonight I had to tie on new droppers three times.
I then moved further down two meadows towards the bird hide. Here the wind had eased up to a ripple and fish were moving to something on or near the surface but I couldn’t see anything hatching. There were a few sedges about but not in any great numbers so I kept faith in the same flies. First cast a fish rose nearby. I stupidly realised afterwards that it was to the booby. Next cast and the same thing happened so I lifted into it and the fish was on and duly landed. The wind was not putting a bow in the line here and I retrieved slowly. 2 other fish were caught here, both to the booby again.
Things went quiet, so I moved back along two meadows where there was a better breeze. The sun was getting lower and it was a wonderful evening to be out fishing.
Two more fish were caught before I packed up. All fish were released.
I went again on Sunday evening and chatting with anglers revealed it had been a good day for fishing, two anglers had caught 4 fish each on the west bank, another had had a fantastic day catching and releasing 10 fish.
Conditions were very different to my last visit with only a very light wind which proved to keep changing and at times completely disappear. The odd fish was rising. I had tied up a couple of sedge pupa patterns and wanted to try on of them on the dropper as there has been sedges about recently. I didn’t fancy a booby on the point as I thought something a bit more subtle may work better in the light breeze, so put on a size 12 greased up Bibio sedgehog. My other dropper was a size 12 black & peacock spider.
The sedgehog floated like a cork and on the second cast a fish casually rose, swallowed the fly and dived back down. I lifted into it and after a very spirited fight duly landed it. I kept this fish for tomorrows dinner and on spooning it found its stomach full of coch y bonddu beetles. Not too dissimilar to the Bibio sedgehog – how lucky as I had no idea there were any beetles about !
