Pete's Weighty ( Fly Fishing ) Words

Its been a busy week so far both in the office and out on the water. Mark was out with Alan Stevens on Tues and is out again today with Natasha and her friend. I have been down to see how they are doing this morning and looks as ever as if the ladies are taking to fly casting like ducks to water. As mentioned before Bob is away sunning himself but I was out guiding Paul yesterday. We were on a stretch of water that Paul has fished before but wanted a little bit of help with. I was very happy to oblige and he did himself proud! It was a really long beat and we covered some water and as ever I find it hard to leave rising fish so lunch ended up at 2.45 rather than the 1pm we had planned. It was worth it though!

The fish, as a whole, are still looking to hold in the middle and tails of pools although we did find a few smaller ones in the heads but not many. The fly of choice was a balloon caddis which by the end of the day was a little the worse for wear and we decided to retire it to the hall of fame for all of its sterling work. Funnily enough I have had this fly in my box for quite a while now but haven’t needed to use it until yesterday. The reason being that we had an awesome hatch of grannom throughout the day. Grannom are a member of the sedge family and the first hatch of sedges that we see in the year. Paul had been on the same stretch of river the day before and hadn’t seen a fish rise although the hatch was starting and despite hooking a fish on a dry first cast it took a couple of hours before the fish got truely locked on to them. When they did though we witnessed some pretty savage takes and some great fishing. It is pretty neat hitting everything as it comes together. Hopefully Paul left with a few more tricks in his bag and even mastered the skated downstream sedge…right Paul?!