Good times ahead..

Its nearly that time that we all look forward to when the rivers open and we can start to explore moving water again. Unless you like catching trout then you can still fish the rivers as I've been doing most of spring, and theres just enough time for a couple more sessions before my focus will turn to the bigger rivers.

Yesterday I had a nice afternoon into evening session on a small stream with fellow LAS member John. Last time i fished with John we had a really good session so I was looking forward to it again.
We decided to head downstream this time and come back up and fish upstream later in the evening. Things started off well when John was into a fish not long after starting and as he was playing it I also had a take that sadly i didn't connect with but would have been great to have a double header to kick things off. Johns fish was an out of season Chub, but a nice one at that so I took a quick snap in the nice surroundings before John quickly put it back. Thoughts suddenly came to a weeks time when the rivers open and these fish can be targeted again!

 

We fished on downstream and picked up a few perch and small pike that were being found in very trouty looking swims, we kept moving on and for once the trout were proving harder to find. Eventually we found some and i caught this lovely fish after seeing it rising, I nearly carried on walking but headed back to the rise and cast over it getting a take straight away.

 

By now we were heading back up stream and the trout tally was starting to climb, not quite on the scale of recent visits but we were finding some fish at least. The best one came to John who fished a really fishy swim and had three goes at this fish, even after it was hooked momentarily it came back and took again on the next cast!

 

On Monday I had a few hours on a local canal and having not fished it for some time i was hopeful it had cleared of the dirty water, sadly it hadn't and the barges coming through didn't help at all. They would churn up lots of loose blanket weed and fishing through it was getting pretty pointless so i change to a weedless surface frog in hope that I'd get some takes in the warm weather. It wasn't actually long before a big mouth appeared from behind the fleeing frog and engulfed it. I nice fish on the frogs but sadly the only one as soon after a few more barges came through and turned the canal into a chocolate soup! Still, was great to get my first fish off the top on a frog.

 

On the lure building front I have been busy with more Ultralights that I'm just beginning to come to the finish stages of so will post some photos when done. In the mean time here is a couple of foil re-finishes I completed a week ago.