A few hours on a favourite tributary with a new friend

A mutual friend made the arrangements.  His pal Tim needed a new floating line in mahogany brown.  The friend thought a few hours fishing wouldn't go amiss for Tim, I agreed.

So meeting on Monday at 18:00 ish (it is a work day after all) we trundled down to the river.  I lent him a rod and a reel loaded with a brown weight forward line.  The river is low, the fish are wary.  Tim was to be introduced into the toe-to-toe, creeping, kneeling and sitting style that fishing the dry fly on here demands.

There was no major event in way of fly life.  A few Blue Winged Olives were evident but there were sedge flies too. 

Tim had on a Double Badger that seems to be just the thing for when the fish are NOT preoccupied on a particular food item.

So it proved.  A splendid three hours were enjoyed by the pair of us as we fished our way upstream as a pair, taking turns at casting to the fish.

Tim found skills he was not sure that he had. 

Catching this fish needed a careful cast slotted sideways between overhanging branches of a sycamore and upreaching seed heads of the grass that had not been shorn by grazing sheep.  I reckon Tim had a mid-air corridor, no more than a couple of feet high, to keep his back cast inside.  A couple of inches too high or low and he would have lost his fly or end up scaring the trout in attempts to recover the fly.

This perfect wild brown trout, which had never seen the hand of man before, was a just reward for his skill.




Regular Rod