Although there are still many many river outings to come the longest day always seems to mark a lowpoint in the season for me and with only a memory of a handfull of warm evenings under my belt it seemed important to get out on the river
All the recent furore about the Barrio 3wt seen me dust down 'No. 12', throw her in the car and revisit an old friend.
The lower Don seemed as good a place as any so off I went.
As per usual I threw on a nymph and spider, content to speculate here and there as I watched what was going on around me. A few smaller fish showed here and there but out of my comfort zone so they were bypassed.
The tail of a long pool where I'd had success before yielded two nice wild 3/4 lb Browns to the spider - we were off and running.
Moving down to the next long slow pool gave a better bit of water for fishing the nymph upstream & the spider was being taken right, left and centre by trout in the 1/2 - 1 1/4lb mark virtually as soon as it hit the water. At one stage I was sitting in a clearing in the reeds after releasing a fish and just threw the leader out before I sorted out my fly line which was tangled around everything and it's dog when a 3/4lb fish appeared from nowhere and hit the spider
The 'warm' weather had fairly brought the flies out and fish were looking up and in the mood.
The tail of the pool was somewhere that I'd commited to memory as the place where I'd seen at least one very decent fish show on an earlier outing. Problem being they were over the other bank which was a good distance away, over a couple of ‘tounges ‘ of faster water & with one of those fly/ line magnet tree branches stuck on the bottom and jutting 1 ½ ft out of the water. I’d previously resigned myself to passing this spot as the wading necessary to fish the spot tactically was not for me in good conditions and definitely not in fading light.
Somehow the excitement of the Trout hammering the spider had the devil on my shoulder filling my head with photo’s of large trout in the net and I crumbled. Insect (especially sedge) life increased and I was aware of easily 5 or 6 decent fish in a coverable area, if I could get into position. Wading as close to the rapids and as far into the centre flow as I dare at the tail of the pool I got going.
Fish after fish came to the spider and all the time I was well aware of the bigger fish off the other bank.
The branch was a major concern and had me stripping the line in on each cast well before the flies had finished fishing effectively. I did get stuck on a limb once but managed to pull free, the second time I wasn’t so fortunate and the flies were toast.
Being a religious man I saw this as the man himself telling me to plug on a dry. A half dozen or so new sedge patterns were just made for this evening and the lightest (fading light) version duly went on. Fish seemed to be everywhere and I had four or five missed takes before I hooked into the fish I’d been after........he was out of the water and off downstream in a flash. I had him close in three or so times before a final run saw the arc in the Barrio straighten...................along with the hook , damn those longer shank Kamisan B400’s. He was perhaps in the 4 – 4 1/2lb range.
Not being downhearted I mucked about at shorter range trying in vain to see my newly installed darker sedge in rapidly failing light. It’s now or never I thought as I cast directly across stream at a good rise – only thing was the fact that I had perhaps 3’ or 4’ of free drift before the current started skating the fly or I had to strip the line back like mad to avoid snagging the branch. This suicide cast I performed half a dozen times before he rose again and I tightened into him.........YES!
I’ll cut a long story short here but he headed off downstream behind the branch and a sustained effort to let him go then bring him back up my side was dashed as he swam for the cover of the branch. After what seemed like 5 mins of me playing a tree I realised he was still attached and there were only two outcomes – either I waded over to the branch (which I really didn’t fancy) or I pulled as hard as I could and something gave. I didn’t fancy either option but wanted to give the fish a fair chance so I headed his way.
The result was that I’m gratefull for my studded Orvis wading boots , my large net & my ketchum release but need to buy a wading staff, new phone and digital camera ‘cos they’re f*****! The return journey should probably not have been attempted as the ‘possibly’ safer trip to other bank might have been more sensible. Bats and sedge in the ‘lug didn’t help the balance either.
Needless to say I didn’t even attempt to photo the fish as I was only too aware of my surroundings and he’d been through a lot. He was returned safely and weighed in the region of 3lb. (also didn’t know at this time the camera which is strung around my neck and tucked inside my waders wasn’t infact inside my waders............DOH!
Fantastic evening but the loss of the larger fish & camera was a massive blow. Exercise losses
Iain
A couple of fish salvaged from the SD card
