Feedback & Reports

Did not fish

The morning session was unproductive in the complete absence of fly, rises and any interest in my various nymph offerings. With a blank looking increasingly on the cards I noticed a dimple in some slack water on the opposite bank. Then another. And another. Two fish feeding quietly and efficiently on a trickle hatch of LDO. No more than 2-3 seconds of drag free drift. By some miracle I caught them both in Comparadun, beautiful hard fighting fish of 16” and 15”. A 12”er followed a little later further upstream. A lovely afternoon in the most picturesque setting.

3 Trout

Blanked. Was a bit unlucky - two rolled off the hook, but it was very tough today with only three bites in all. A few sparse LDO hatches for an hour or two in the early afternoon and that was when all the bites came, completely dead either side. Not many trout rising to them or taking sub-surface, and unfortunately those I did see were on the fast side beyond fast current requiring a reach cast for a few seconds presentation, or in dead slack water making presentation very difficult. Tried everything from dries to nymphs, spiders to black wooly bugger - 2 of the three bites came to the nymph. Nice to be on the river again though, it's beginning to wake up again and the birds certainly appreciated the few mayflies more than the trout - grey wagtail, dipper, and a few early swallows back hawking over the river. Lovely to be back too after the long winter and last few weeks of deluges!

One other thing maybe to note - I saw five dead toads in the bankside shallows, all at different places which was a little alarming. None showed any signs of predation. No dead fish or obvious signs of pollution. Perhaps an amphibian disease is striking at the moment? Or maybe correlated with high toad activity and visibility at the moment - have seen a lot of toadspawn and tadpoles recently too. But I've never seen a string of dead toads like that before. Did hear at least two more croaking in bankside cover.

1 Trout

5 Trout

Changeable weather, lovely to be out of London and on the river.
LDOs were coming off from mid morning but we didn't find any rising fish.
8 WBT landed between the two of us, biggest 19".

8 Trout

7 Trout

High water but caught one and lost another, on this beautiful beat!

1 Trout

Conditions looked good and I caught a nice 2lb trout after a few mins on a black woolly bigger. Got harder after that! Few knocks on the same woolly bugger, and tried nymphing the pockets, but nothing else to the net all day. Saw a handful of LDOs in the air and witnessed one splashy rise, otherwise very quiet indeed.

1 Trout

A beautiful varied beat. Only fished lower sections. A very small LDO hatch around 2 got into what felt like a decent fish but lost it in a downstream run.