Forced to investigate....

All i seem to do is start my posts with how rubbish things have been, I'm afraid its going to be more of the same.... Its been the worse 12 months i can remember for fishing conditions. It feels like its taking forever for the fishing to start picking up.

I'm not really doing allot of fishing at the moment, conditions have not been ideal and the local waters i only have time for at the minute all look quite dirty and pretty dead. This has really knocked my motivation to get out and even try, knowing in the back of my mind that its probably a waste of time, and it isn't even pleasant outside.

I had the chance to fish the weekend but couldn't find anyone to fish with at first then it turned out my mate Paul from River Piker was looking to fish the Sunday so thought I'd get together and see what we could work out between us. Disappointingly when we reached the canal we found it was a very dirty kind of colour and not allot of visibility, it was going to be like finding a needle in a haystack. We gave it a good go before moving onto another 3 canals in total all faring the same, horrible dirty water! Im not sure what is the cause of this. Not having many stillwaters local it was pretty much the end of our chances and we both ended up blanking, although Paul had an early morning pike on his own at another spot.
I was very disappointed to have finally got out fishing only to blank and have a frustrating day, this also meant i wouldn't be fishing much after work as all the local spots were the same.

I had no plans to fish for a while until it eventually warms up but thought i had a chance Thursday that i might get out and have a go. My luck was in and the Mrs had the day off, usually this meant it was a big no no to ask to go fishing, but she was going out for the day with her parents. I jumped at the chance to get out and thought I'd give one more canal spot a chance before resting them a few weeks. I wanted to look at this spot anyway as last year at this time i was catching lots of coarse fish on the fly in a t-shirt! Things are way behind schedule this year, I even saw some snow still on the ground today on my travels from the snow that fell weeks ago.

I cast about with kopyto's as there was no sign of any fish shoaling up or rising. It took quite a while but i did find a perch eventually, other than that it felt like i was wasting my time in the awful coloured water.

 

I had time left so decided to go and investigate a small river i had been thinking of trying for trout. There isn't much in the way of trout around me, so i don't have any local fly fishing opportunities. As soon as i found out there was the possibility of some local trout it got me really interested. Ive been checking out spots on google earth but didn't know when or where to go try. I knew there wasn't going to be anything much in the way of numbers of fish and expected them to be small trout. This didn't fase me though as catching trout on the fly is all about the method than anything else.

So the opportunity came and i took the chance to go and look at the little river, i say river, it is merely just a small stream that you can literally jump across.

It was proving very difficult just to find a spot to park the car and get to the river, and when i did eventually find a suitable spot it was even more difficult to access the water as it was such a jungle. It was the kind of stream that was covered over in most places with bushes and trees, often fallen trees lay right across the stream. 

 

I didn't have my waders with me which would have made things much easier, I could have walked down stream and then got into the stream and waded up it, this would mean i would have a slight bit more room to cast and i could also creep up on the fish better without them knowing I was there. In reality i was scrambling about on the bank for little holes between the overgrowth vegetation, and when i did find a slightly deeper spot it was proving difficult to get a fly in the water without the fish seeing me and spooking.

 

I didn't see many fish but didn't disturb a few pockets of fish that i saw dart off when they saw me, not 100% they were trout but could have been.

I was fishing duo which meant i could float a small nymph in the shallow water and search the slightly deeper pools. I had just found a slightly deeper run that also had less flow, it was still only about 2 foot deep. I saw a few smaller fish spook close to me but they swarm upstream so there was a chance fish further down the pool were still sat there. Luckily it was one of the only areas i could get a reasonably long distance cast and i landed the fly just where i wanted it, the dry fly suspending the nymph wasn't afloat for long and i saw it shoot under. A fish on! now what was it? at first it looked like a chub until it jumped out the water followed by at least another 7 jumps! It was certainly a trout and a bigger one than i would have expected from such a small water. Finally in the net, i had a closer look and it was a lovely silvery blue colour, unlike the golden brown colouration i am used to catching on other rivers.

 

 

I was over the moon with that result, finally some localish trout to have a go at! Im now left all excited to go again sometime and see if i can get better results with waders on, it should also get better in summer when its warmer and fish can be spotted rising.

Some light at the end of the tunnel.....