What sticks in your mind...

Its a been a strange couple of weeks.  I have had quite a few trips out since last encountering Mr and Mrs Perambulator . The weather lately has been kind and the fish have on the whole been willing.  The rivers are on the low side but not as yet on their bones , which considering the amount of rain we had this year is to be expected. I fished the upper Dove once more and I guess probably for the last time until the leaves are once again telling me winter is on the way.  In my view the upper waters and small becks around here are best fished early and late, the dog days of summer are a time when they should be left to survive the lack of water.  This year through the deluge they were my season savers and have earned a rest now.

I visited the Ure this week with a guest there were a few things that stuck in my mind from the day.  Firstly having not been for a while I remembered why I bother to make the 90 minute drive .The place is stunning, a river that even low as it was at the weekend had the ability to make you stop at the bank top and just lean on the wading staff and stare a few minutes. A Yorkshire Dales river in its perfect state sufficiently matured to have a certain tea stained grandeur but still bustling enough to have the riffles and glides beloved of the fly angler.   Much as I love the small rivers and becks, I have taken to this river big style and dont intend to give it up in a rush.

Sadly after hooking and landing a big raggy rainbow trout and dispatching it for the freezer and hooking and losing another that would have weighed a good 4 or 5 lbs, ( I had previously heard a rumour that about 4000 had been accidentally released into the river ) .  I wonder how anyone can be so bloody careless to do that, the rivers are under enough pressure as it is without someone dumping a few tonnes of fry eaters into the equation.  It beggars belief how such things can seemingly be so easily done. And pass of with so little comment.

Lastly on the day I took a guest ,  I hope he wont me saying it but he is an accomplished angler.  It does me good to fish with such people he caught many more fish than me but I enjoy watching fine anglers at work its like beating yourself on the back with a stick.  Watch them fish the places you fish and watch them do a better job of it than you. I would advise anyone who wants to improve to do the same.  It is like being prodded in the ribs with a stick much as the teachers at my Quaker boarding school used to do.  A pointed reminder that effort and application are more important than anything else and that the route to angling nirvana is through chanting the mantra....................achieve a drag free drift...........................and not through if only had that new 9ft sage.....

I am hoping that the next few weeks will provide a few more opportunities for fishing in the run up to Sept when for me the cream of the grayling sport starts,  I have some leave coming up and planning that the Ure will not be such a stranger to me.