Pete's Weighty ( Fly Fishing ) Words

It feels like I have been trying to mark the end of the brown trout season for about 3 weeks now. I managed to get out just before the close of the river season down here with a wonderful day up on the Moors followed by a trip onto my beloved Taw. On Sunday the brown trout lakes shut and so Mark and I popped up to Fernworthy to have a go for some trout there and to take some photos for the new website. I rigged up with my typical brown trout lake set up of intermediate line and black tadpole. I was a little shamed by Mark as he carefully tied on a dry. We decided to walk a bit and take in a beautiful day. We worked the bank that was out of the sunlight and came across a few rising fish. Being a gentleman (more like I had the wrong set up!) I offered Mark a shot at them and he efficiently picked out 3 fish. It was tricky fishing as there was limited back cast room. We walked and fished a fair bit but it was really nice to be out there on such a nice day. We also bumped into a few other anglers which was nice.

Yesterday I headed up for some chalkstream fishing. The river season for browns on chalkstreams closes today and I wanted to meet up with Ray to see in the close and to plan our trip to NZ. I say plan, we had a quick sandwich and decided to head for Christchurch where Ray has made contact with a well known guide there and fish around there for 5 days and then head south and fish for that area for 5 days. It is only a 10 day trip so we plan to maximise fishing and come back exhausted…I can’t wait!

The fishing was amazing yesterday. I got into the river and made a few casts with a dry (the usual scruffy klink) and picked up a nice brown. I moved up a bit and fished a “pool” just below a footbridge where I could sight cast to fish. It was nice to see the reaction of the fish to the fly and I watched with interest several refusals. There was a nice hatch of smallish olives in progress and I decided to scale things down a bit and tied a similar, smaller fly with a lighter hackle and watched similar results. This time I popped on a black klinkhammer with silver ribbing in size 20. This time no refusals and they were liking what they saw. Ray had left a message, the fishing had been too good to answer the phone, and when he turned up just over an hour later I had moved just 20 feet. When we broke for lunch I think we had moved about 60 feet or so. Ray had to leave about 2 ish so we headed downstream and worked our way back up. When he left I still had plenty of water to fish so I decided to see if the fish still wanted smaller still and tied on a size 24 klinkhammer I had tied earlier in the year. I was really pleased to see that it did work pretty well despite the lack of hatch at this time. I headed upstream further and I hooked a nice brown of 12 inches. I released it, snipped off my fly and said to myself that it was perfect point to end my river season for browns. Its nice when things like that happen, I didn’t feel the need to carry on for the sake of numbers; it just felt right to stop there. I guess it is now time to think about some grayling now….

We are busy getting ready for the Tackle and Guns show this week. It is a show for the trade to see what will be on offer for the 2009 season. It is always nice to meet up with people in the industry and show each other our latest offerings. We will be taking new rods from Scott including the new A3 and additions to the S4 range including a new 10ft 7wt. We have Jeff from Abel over who will be on our booth with some new goodies. We are also very excited that we have been asked to be the UK distributor of St Croix fly rods. We felt these rods fitted in perfectly with Scott from a pricing view as they don’t really overlap but they also fit in with our view of sourcing products that are built by fishermen for fishermen at a fair price. The rods, as with Scott, are built in the US and come from a company that has a heritage of rod building. I have been using and teaching with one of their rods of late and am really impressed. Jeff is with us for a few days so I am hoping to take him in search of some grayling!

It was sad to hear of the passing of Mel Krieger. I doubt there isn’t an instructor out there who doesn’t own a copy of The Essence of Fly Casting. It is a great book that explains the mechanics of casting in a clear and concise manner. He will be greatly missed.