Exploration…

April 11, 2011 Adam Rawson

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Sunday 11th April saw me able to finally get a chance to explore a new water. I had been thinking about this place all winter and with the promise of truly wild brownies and rumours of fish in excess of 3lb it was easy to see why!

Accompanied again by Graham, we first walked to the bottom of the stretch – not typical trout water, a little more ‘coarse-like’ but having never visited before it was worth a look. After reaching the bottom and walking all the way back up, it was clear there were plenty of chub present, every swim seemed to be full of them! We also spotted roach, dace and a few Pike – good to know for when June 16th comes around! There were a few likely looking trout pools, faster, broken water that we each nymphed a couple of times. We both connected with fish but unfortunately Graham’s was a Chub and mine was a Perch! My first on a caddis case nymph!

We started to walk further up in search of more ‘trouty looking water’. After spotting countless more Chub and a couple of specimen Roach we reached a shady tree section. Upon entering the water all we could see as we looked upstream were fabulous riffles! After walking through the first couple of really shallow ones, we reached a slighlty deeper one. I almost walked through it but something told me to have a go. I can’t have had more than 3 run throughs of my nymph when the fly line held up a little. I lifted the rod and sure enough I was attached to something! After a spirited scrap a small wildie graced my net.

I was starting to think the 8′ 5wt was going to be a bit overkill!

It was Graham’s go next. Casting again into the same small riffle and again connecting with a fish with 3 casts! This time the fish was giving him the run around! Until the fish reached the net it could have easily been a 2lber! Although it wasn’t, it was definitely punching way above it’s weight!

There can’t be many better looking fish!

With it being my go again, I chanced the same pool and once again a fish took! Although this time it shook the hook. Moving upstream we came to another super looking pool. I ran my nymph through and this time I had to wait a little longer, but eventually hooked another trout. Another super fight resulted in another great fish.

The next few pools saw a couple more lost fish and one more caught and athough there was still a lot more water to fish further upstream, time was running out. We decided to save that for next time – hopefully not too long away!