First day on the river for four months, floods and restricted lockdown travel having kept me away since last November, so I made an early start despite the forecast.
It was snowing as I tackled up, flakes as big as a ten pence piece swirling around, but it had stopped by the time I made my first cast of the river trout season. With the cloud lifting, the temperature dropped, a bitter northerly wind got up and the sun revealed a unexpectedly low and clear, very bare river.
No fish were moving as I worked my way upstream back to the car, dippers and wagtails seemed busy nesting rather than feeding. My pair of beaded nymphs wouldn't trundle through and were soon swapped for a lighter 2mm #22 on the point and a #16 spider on the dropper.
I was out of sorts, slipping all over the place, back, knees and ankles not flexible enough, fingers fumbling and numb, and generally feeling like a man too old and clumsy to be wading a stony river.
After two hours I saw a rise in the faster broken water at the head of the glide, covering it with what I had on resulted in an unexpected take. I assumed to the Waterhen Bloa, but the little trout had taken the copper beaded PTN.
The banker pool I was working my way up to failed to produce, as did the lengthy piece of pocket water above it, so being conveniently level with the car at noon, a flask of tea and a sandwich beckoned.
After lunch, the river remained lifeless, nothing much was hatching. After reading about other people's first days, I was hoping for some LDO's early afternoon. Sure enough as I approached an anticipated run, fish were rising to what turned out to be some large and small upwings, (species unknown to me). A #17 loopwing parachute failed, as did a #21. By now I was on a shingle beach, on my protesting knees, tying on a #20, (a large #20), olive klink. An upstream presentation was awkward, so I shuffled to a position allowing me to cast across and slightly down. Still awkward, but as soon as I got it right I got an acceptance and a nice solid trout that jumped several times............
The next time I got it right, another nice trout came off, annoyingly the hook had snapped at the bend, I find this can be an occasional problem with fine black nickel Tiemco's.
Plenty of duns seemed to be making it unmolested, so I was thinking that I'd do better with a spider, perhaps a Waterhen Bloa and/or Hareslug & Plover, for fish that seemed to be taking emergers. But the hatch seemed to be petering out and I was having too much fun trying to crack the dry fly presentation, so I stuck with it. When I decided to call it a day, my knees seemed to have locked solid and I realised I'd been knelt there for ninety minutes.......
So not a multiple fish day, but better than I thought it might be at the beginning and very enjoyable.
), I was well wrapped up against the elements and had a great time.
