End of a weird but actually ok season .

I know I am letting the blog drift but i thought an end of season update was in order. Also to show that I do also listen to those kind readers who emailed me and said don`t give up writing the blog .  So the plan is I will do that but I plan along the way to change what I put up .  I hope I can convey and  reflect more on why I fish , especially why I visit the places I do.  Also as I am now semi retired and soon to be fully retired I will be including some of the other things I waste my time doing . 

On the face of it it’s been an awful season ,  the mid season few months have seen desperately low levels due to the lack of rain following a almost dry winter of 24/25 .  The chalk stream is the lowest it’s been for 60 years the first few months of the season fished well until the aquifers finally emptied .  The rain fed streams that run of the North York moors have been pitifully low all season they barely got going at the season start and then quickly ran almost dry.  So by all practical measures it’s been a miserable season .  But in terms of catches it has had some real highlights,   Early season I managed a new personal best fly rod caught chub .  At just over 5lb it was a real highlight ,  but in the few weeks before that I had managed several nice chub and a couple of notable grayling , I have always enjoyed chub on the fly .  They take dries and on their day they rise  as well as trout .  I have always been fond of them, a chub was the first fish I saw caught on a dry fly , I watched a teacher at my first boarding school catch some chub in the Whiske a little tributary of the Swale a river which then was the perfect image of a small stream clear water , full of streamer weed and shoals of fish, Sadly years later I foolishly re visited and found it destroyed and polluted . 

Driffield Beck Chub 

A few weeks later I very nearly didn’t bother going on a planned trip ,  I had a bad back and really wasn’t feeling like it but after giving myself a virtual slap I took an old Sharpe’s featherweight bamboo and ended up with two cracking fish , one over 4lb and the other 3 1/2 lb .  The bigger fish I had targeted before but that day approached its regular holding spot red  Indian style on all fours which for a gentleman of my years with buggered knees is not something to be done on a whim .  Spotting it just up stream of where I was expecting it to be and after watching it through the bankside grasses and stuff and seeing it was feeding, the nymph was cast upstream and second drift down the fish moved to the side and took it comfortably.  The river was carrying heavy weed growth and I am convinced  the bamboo rod and silk line made a difference to holding it as it clearly wasn`t impressed by the idea that an overweight old bloke on all folks had managed to deceive it .  The silk line has zero stretch but the bamboo absorbs the sudden lunges of a big fish well that’s my thoughts .  I certainly seem to be able to apply a lot of pressure.

Driffield Beck Brown trout 

An hour later and nearly back to the hut I noticed a large shape drop down in the water at the base of a large willow .  I decided it was worth a speculative cast .  Almost as soon as the nymph hit the water the tippet darted away .  Another dogged fight meant fish two in the net .  

That really was the end of the good fishing for the season . there was a few early trips after grayling but between catching a few decent fish and a lot of not so decent fish the one real highlight was seeing the big numbers of tiny grayling which meant that this years spawning had yielded good success .  After catching a few on tiny dries I had to leave several stretches to avoid catching the little darlings . I hope they they will be about in a year or two when they are bigger. 

Later in the year we had a cottage booked in Northumberland .  The cottage came with fishing on the Coquet well as you might expect the river was on its bones and unfishable .  I did manage a couple of tiny browns on dry flies early morning.  it’s a pretty river though and have it marked down as a future destination.  

The Bamboo obsession still rumbles on .  The little Garrison that Luke Bannister built for me was given its first outing of the year small trout were out in numbers and it proved to be as delightful to fish with as I had hoped.

I also picked up an unusual action rod it was a somewhat impulsive bid on that auction site . Well when I say unusual it is truly a faster action rod than my other bamboo. It is built on a Dickerson 7612 taper , By Rick Cunningham an American builder. When it arrived I discovered that it had a few defects that weren`t described at all. But after negotiating a very handsome deal with the seller I retained the rod and have returned it to 100 percent  .  It has recently been christened and it is indeed a very nice rod ,  just a bit quicker than most of my other bamboo.

As for the the rest of the season it was really a no show ,  As I type it is on the back of a week or two of nice wet weather even a few inches of early snow  ,The rivers were and still are in need of a good period of rain to flush them out . Also it will replenish the groundwater .  So for now the fishing is buggered but if it replenishes the groundwater and aquifers under the chalk stream then I aren`t going to complain .  So i will leave this here and say have a happy Christmas and lets hope for a prosperous new year , Which given the current state of the world seems highly unlikely .