Fly Fishing - a brace of big browns!

14th April 2016

The day started off cloud and calm, good weather really but to the west ominous clouds loomed. It wasn't long till the rain began to rise. After checking the weather channel which stated it would start raining at 2. It was 10am and heavy drizzle was intensifying. I monitored the weather radar and came to the conclussion the heaviest would soon pass and it would ease off. 

It was around dinner when i arrived at the river and the rain had all but eased off. This weather of late seems perfect for hogweed as the amount it has come up already in 2 weeks is unreal. Some are over 2-3 feet already. The river was in good condition, slightly coloured and raised a little but easily fishable. I popped on a duo with heavy beads to offset the water speed and made my way up river. It was slow progress, and for a couple of hours not much happened other than a change of flies. 

I came to a long section which last season was relatively calm but the current runs further down it allowing flies to drift. The weight i had kn was too much which i knew but i stuck at it as i knee here had a lot of large boulders so the flies would be ip and down tumbling. 

Half way up the channel and i got my first take, it was a good weight from the initial strike and it was off. This was a jumpy trout which made me a little tense considering it was withing grabbing distance. It was a good fish and with all the jumping on a barbless hook it is nerve racking especially when you haven't landed one yet. He came close a couple of times to the net but i wasn't rushing him and got him. I let out a little cheer due to it breaking a blank and being a nice fish. 

After releasing i caught the tree behind and i messed around for a minute removing them. About 10m upstream i got another take. This one felt bigger as ot cruised off downstream and ping the hook popped out. A little gutting but i'd already had a good fish. 

I continued upstream and started nymphing a pool when i saw a rise. A quick change of set up and i was chasing browns on the dry. This particular spot was awkward, the rises were under tree cover (6 feet gap between) and the area i was stood led into a fast ripple meaning the line eas accelerating quickly causing drag. I added a 'reach' into my cast which Mike taught me and i had 4 misses on the dry. I saw one and it was about 6-8oz but they seemed very snatchy. 

I moved on and came to my final bend. I was fishing the seem which pushed against the far bank when i saw a tiny rise . 3rd cast and it took it and it was a good old friend. After a tough fight with my #6 bending right over and 2 failed netting attempts (i need a bigger net?) i had it. Again. Patterns told me it was the same fish from 2 weeks ago and boy had it been feeding well. Ironically caught on the same fly in the same spot. 

Now that doesn't disappoint me as it shows catch & release is rewarding! It gave me a brilliant fight both times. One bad point was while unhooking a woman watching who had asked me if i kill them?? Her dog ran down and tangled in my line almost dragging my rod in and almost ripping the hook through the fished mouth, luckily as i was unhooking i managed to snap the line before it could tighten. 

Barry, as i've named him, will probably be there alot, seems to own that eddy. However he isn't alone as i found out. I witnessed strange behavior which i'm hoping someone can explain. I kept hearing a fish rise with a plop, then i saw it, across a large riffle that lend into the bend was a small patch of still water and something was rising high up against the bottom of the bank. As i tried to catch it as it was constantly rising i caught on some debris only feet away from the rises. Practically crawling i retrieved my hook and continued to attempt to woo the trout? 

Then. I saw the unmistakable shape of a trout and i  popped my polaroids on. There it was a 2lb or so trout cruising out of the corner (downstream) so i backed up very slowly. I kept dropping a dry on its head and it gradually got closer and closer to the point it was inside my rods reach. Then a second one came along side it and they both swam off downstream. a truly strange moment to have witnesses up so amazing. Having kept very motionless other than my casting arm i'd been able to see trout enjoying themselves in their natural habitat. My initial thoughts was it was grabbing bugs from the roots of the banking and possible mating or fighting for position. 

So with the way the year has started i can only

Hope that this isn't the best and that theres plenty still to come. 

Fly Fishing - Trout on the dry in march!

31st March 2016

Well, technically it is April 1st due to the leap year but considering that extra day puts us still in March i can still talk about this elusive dry fly fishing in March. Now last year i was down on the Irwell practising my casting, nowadays i know what i'm doing, i mean, i can hit a spot almost perfectly almost every cast, even of ly casting method isn't textbook it does work for me. I am trying to refine it but whenever a fish rises i don't piss about and just pop the fly where it's needed without thinking about my cast and that works somehow. It seems the more i think about my technique the more i look like i'm waving a huge wand above my head.

Anyway, back to the fishing, it is still the Easter holidays, it is moderatly warm and it was sunny. Now my beats of the Irwell are not the quietest at the best of times, i can go down at 6am and find someone dunking their head under the water, and those who have read this blog know that it happened! After i got there though it was fairly quiet, around 1pm. I watched the water chose a klink and dink with a stimulator acting as the dry and 2 nymphs below, i needed some weight to get down but also wanted the dry to be heavy enough to hold the weight and pull them through so they wouldn't snag every cast. It worked well and i removed a good dozen baby wipes but nothing was showing, really fishy spots produced nothing and i get into my head that something wrong. Fortunately, after an hour or so i hit into a small brown and landed him fairly quickly, the paths were getting busy but no one was playing near the water nor any dogs!

It was a slow day, it was another hour till my next hit but it jumped clean off as i struck, at least it was sort of working. Bare in mind i wasn't fishing the whole time, alot of water watching and bird watching, 2 kingfishers fand a lone goosander flew past. Still nothing rising, even despite a steady stream of olives across the river, it was a slow steady hatch, maybe 1 every minute or so (that i noticed) but i put this down to the proximity of the paths to the river that puts them off.

The Mrs rang saying she wanted to meet me so i told her where to meet me and i headed upstream, however upon getting there i found 2 people spinning, one sat on a fishing box? So i headed up to a quiet corner and nymphed around but nothing. Thinking i was being called home by the Mrs, hence why she was really coming, i started packing away. At this point i noticed a very small rise tucked into the bank on the far side, so i hastily rerigged my fly rod for a dry fly so i could say "5 more minutes" when the Mrs turned up. Just as i had finished there she was at the top of the hill with my daughter. So i helped them both down and began the dry game.

I started off with a deer hair caddis winged experiment, why? Well it was the smallest dry i had and the olives were pretty small, plus it was good to see how well it floated! However it continued to rise calmy and slowly ignoring it. So i decided to change fly, i actually considered rerigging completely, as in my haste prior i had put my reel on backwards thus the handle was on the opposite side, but i knee the Mrs wouldn't be tol happy with waiting. So i popped on some 6x hardys tippet and the adams i had tied earlier when i first started tying and cast just ahead of the rises.

It ignored it for 3 or 4 rises and i added about 4 inches infront each cast to try to give it longer to notice my fly. Then it was gone, a tiny sip off the top and i struck into it, it splashed and i alerted the Mrs who was convinced i was snagged on the bottom. After reassuring her i had a fish, within maybe 15 seconds it was swimming slowly on the surface, getting within 2 feet of my net reach (which i didn't attempt) i told myself "don't rush it" and within a second it shot off back into the depths of the pool. I was stripping line as i couldn't reel in, i could of swapped hands and wound the reel with my right hand but it wasn't a risk worth taking. I kept control of the fish keeping it in the pool, it only ever stripped line out to go down to the bottom rather than racing off up or downstream. This pool had a fine gravelly bottom so probably held very little cover for it to go behind, plus the fact that when i did land it, it had old v-shaped scars from birds showed that this tactic probably saved it's life when it was smaller.

Withing 3 minutes i had tempted it to my net and was presented with a new personal best and a lovely looking specimen even with the scars. It had been feeding well and was a very healthy fat trout, sipping flies all day will get you like that. It was a brilliant moment as my daughter was there, a nee personal best caught on my own tied flies, and hopefully it would shy off for the rest of the day and avoid being caught by a spinner.  After a safe release i told the Mrs we should go and end the day on a high, and as i made my way out of the woods, 2 more anglers with spinning rods arrived.

It was a job well done and a great start to the year, hopefully there will be more fish to aim dries at and the nymphing game hots up!

Fly Fishing: Winter Grayling and scouting about.

16th-18th February 2016

It's official, i've wet my knot after 4 months. With my good friend Mike France off work for a couple of days we both felt the need to get our fishing. Fortunatly we was hit with 2 dry days after a week pf rain allowing the river levels to drop substantially, the rivers were still up a foot or so which allowed us to fish many nore deeper holes but with the temperature barely above freezing we opted for a dinner time start in the hope the water would be 'a little warmer'.

We soon arrived and was into a fish within five minutes each, both grayling! With our point system in place (3 for a grayling 1 for a trout) we were both off to a flyer. This grayling was extra special too, as it was the first fish to be fooled by a fly tied by my own hand! Funnily it aas a copy of the fly that caught me my first grayling the year prior. I was fishing trio with not too much weight, but the water was running fast so it was a case of pocket water hunting.

Mike took the lead with a trout and another grayling and headed upstream. I caught a small trout then targeted a 2 foot strip of slack water next to a raging riffle,  i was in straight away and the grayling made light work of the fight by swimming towards me through the rough water. However the next 3 that took the fly were pulled off the hook as soon as they entered the rough riffles. It was frustrating obviously but still fun knowing my flies were convincing fish to feed. After the run went quiet i headed up and caught up with mike.

He told me of a fish he'd lost that he'd on for quite a while which was frustrating as it would of been the biggest of the day easily and we headed across a deep slow pool fed by a bend in the river. I was into a nice grayling straight away it was running me downstream and from past experience i lost alot of grayling last year when they got below me, giving it some line in the hope to calm it down as i headed downstream to get below it, however after constantly thumping the bottom it came off, possibly due to the line slacking as i headed past it. Thing went a little quiet for me then, well compared to Mike.

Mike had found a pool of them and his shrimp he tied the night prior was pulling them out! As a team effort there is no frustration in seeing your friend catch fish after fish even if he manages to make the score of 38 points (10 grayling 8 trout) i meanwhile had caught a second small trout and a small grayling. I again came into a decent grayling and was again frustrated as it swam under a snag, possibly the other half of a pipe that stretches across the river. I waded out and used my stick to spook the fish and after some head shaking it was off the hook and my flies popped out of the snag.

Following Mikes lead i tied on my own czech nymph, barely able to feel my fingers at this point. Heading up past the bend in search of fish i fished a pool i had caught several fish previously and wasn't dissapointed. Well, not by the lack of takes, 6 grayling i lost before a final 7th take was in the net. With the wind coming upstream my line was doubling over on itself meaning it was very difficult  keeping in contact possibly causing poor hook placements and thus lost fish.

Overall we ended the day on 52 points. 14 grayling 10 trout and despite the freezing weather it was a very good day!

The next day we had planned to look at the second half of the river however some overnight rain had occurred and with the new river level chart being a little hard to understand as peaks and gradual rises are higher to define we risked the journey to heck. Upon arrival it was up another 2 feet easily, raging chocolate brown and all running at one speed with no slack water in sight. So we decided to go pike hunting on the canal.

The canal was crystal clear when we arrived, very little cover as it had been cut down and only 3 feet deep at most. It took till a mile or so before we hit coloured water and with my pike senses tingling i spotted a jack pike slowly moving out from the side. We both tried tempting it and after a brief look at Mikes fly it awam off to the opposite bank.  Moving on up we fished a basin and any weed or cover that was there with no avail so we continued on our pike stalking.

I again spotted another pike just on the inside of the wall and again we both tried to convincd it but after following our flies briefly it soon grew wary and swam off. The third and final pike which i spotted was much the same but we was dissapointed with the canal overall. Nothing moving, no features or cover and a small dead jack on the bottom. Probably due to the clear water and kids with air rifles.

On the third day we knew the rivers would still be up ao we headed deep up the river in its top most tributaries in search of fishable water as we expected it to run off quicker here than the main river and  it had. We didn't fish for long as we was scouting for water to fish when the main river is rained off and we found some. We both convinced a trout each in our brief moments of fishing, and i lost a second fish. Was good to be up in the wilds of a narrow stream which held some very fishy pools.

All in all it was good to be out in good company and despite only carching 4 grayling and 3 trout in 3 days it wasn't wasted. We learnt alot about the river and its changes and we broke our duck of 4 months without fishing. Finally catching fish on my own flies was a huge moment in my fly fishing journey!

:pics and videos will be added once my internet is sorted:

Countdown to the season start

With BT still struggling to figure out how to gain access to my house due to a tree root, i am still without internet and tv making blogging hard and video and photo upload almost impossible, so apologies in advance for the lack of images which i will rectify once i am up and running, hopefully before the season starts!

So with the season looning closer i am still yet to organise my fishing tackle, mainly due to the bad weather making any grayling trips nigh on inpossible, without the ability to drive it is worthless risking travelling a distance to find a river 'almost' impossible to fish. So i have a couple of hours a week been spent fly tying. Now i have been mainly 'messing around' testing what materials can do and look like and i have surprised myself. Still awaiting my partridge feathers from John Norris so aboiding dries till then, thoughi do need some cock hackle in fairness for some nymphs. There is so much to learn and remember but the best part is you can picture a fly you want to make and tie it, theres basic patterns you can go off and add you own twist and colours, but until the season starts it is impossible to see which are effective. I'm enjoying it more than i thought i would and i an glad i started now as i was going to start in a few years.

With the local river being the Irwell and it's lack of grayling theres almost a 5 month gap between my fishing trips, a long time! So the itch is real right now! Hopefully, in the next couple of weeks there might be an oppurtunity to go chase some ladies! If it's planned then there will be some bling and pink flies being tied in preparation, already have a couple but with the flooding this winter there will be many additional snags!

2016: A new year and many changes

12th January 2016

So it has been a month since my last post and alot has happened in this, somewhat, short time. Firstly, i am writing this on my phone, limited to my phone for internet due to moving house i have been somewhat pushed away from some of the people i have come to know since i began fly fishing last year. Hopefully when BT figure a way to get internet past the tree roots on my street then i will be sorted. Secondly, and i will post pictures once i have internet on my PC, we have had 6 major storms since me and Mike asked for a bit more water in the river. One lf which broke all records and caused 20-30foot rise in the Irwells river level. Now, floods are natural, but they can be managed better, i won't go into my case on urbanisation and deforestation (even if its a coiple of riverside trees i don't mean like in the amazon).

The unnatural thing about the floods is the amount of rubbish left behind and the numerous bikes and other objects that i removed from the river last year are all in vain as the river is now inandated with tonnes and tonnes of not just rubbish but massive metal objects, ripped away from there bankside lies. The river has changed shape, tonnes of silt deposited has changed the river with channels formed and a total removal of a tiny side stream feeding 'big fish pool', again pictures will be posted once i have got internet on my pc.

So what have i done in my spare time, well moving house is stressful enough, especially balancing a higher rent. But one thing i didn't expect to get into this soon was fly tying. Now, i had been talking to Mike F about it for a while and i began to develop an itch. After trying to find a vice another friend of mine, Mike J messaged me he had a vice he had. Having kept hold of it for a month while i moved house and sorted some finances i bought the vice and he kindly threw in a few materials to get me started. Mike F kindly tool me to a Bolton fly tying meeting and showed me how to tie my first fly, i soon realised i needed to wear my glasses. Something i haven't sone since i left my best pair in college 7 years ago. Now with the 'spare pair' with slightly bent arms from playdates with my daughter they offer me greater vision on such a tiny work space. I tied 6 of the fly Mike showed me to tie, a pheasant tail nymph, and i was pleased with the result. Was great to finally get going and with a ideology of 6 flies of each tied, it gave me a basis to work on.

Now i have been watching a good few videos and have enjoyed watch Davie McPhail on youtube, he doesn't mind leaving little tags so gave my confidence in not being 100% neat, something Mike F had told me about a highly respected fishermans fly tying being not about neatness but catching fish. After watching a video of him tying a polish nymph i decided to have a crack, having only pheasant tails featherwise, except CDC, it allowed me stick with something i knew. I had a couple of issues with the dubbing not staying on the thread as well as i would of like, a frayed thread as it caugjt on the hook end, and the whip finish getting stuck behind the bead causing the final pull through to be a little tough. All in all it turned out well and i am looking forward to whatever i choose to tie next.

To conclude, most of you who have followed my blog know of a couple of flies that got demolished last year to a point were they fell apart, well i kept these and what was left of them and was considering, especially the adams, doing a repair job, the adams was basically stripped of dubbing and the depth charge,well, all that is left is the superheavy bead but i have tinsel and black dubbing to restore it to the depth charge!

Blog images here (can't upload from phone)
Click link to view images!

Fly Fishing: End of the first year!

So since i took up fly fishing back in April. One of the greatest decisions i have made i might add, i have come to learn so much about the art of fly fishing and yet still know so very little. You see fly fishing is all about theories. It's ok knowing what your doing, but in fact there are a thousand theories in your head once you arrive. Which fly, location, method, angle, distance, thousands that we have to filter through in a short space of time that we barely realise how much we do, but even then the choice we make doesn't guarantee us a fish, as the only truth amongst all these theories is the trouts final decision itself.

Now i have come to know of some very good fly fisherman and some personally, which when you originally come from a council estate in Bolton i wouldn't of expected to be among people such as these and to you all, and even those who merely put the odd comment now and again, it's all very much appreciated.

I am moving house at the moment so any more fishing this month before 2016 is unlikely so the chance of a winter pike on the fly is highly unlikely as free time has been sparse. So this is, i guess, a summary of my first 'year' of fly fishing.

It all started off with me treking down the river, wading in with my wellies on and practicing my casting. Youtube and text book guided. I hadn't been fishing since school, though i had fished since i was 3, but now i had a beautiful family i could go out and relax and unwind and when that large trout came full bodied out the water my hunger was back.  It took me 4 trips before i got a take and then another till i landed one (well 3) 2 on the nymph and 1 on the dry as it began to rain. Since then i went 44 trips without blanking, some days tougher than others but learning all the time.

The last time i went was when the hurricanes landed, Abigail or angelica i believe it was called, the river was high and dangerous but we risked it, then we did an hour on the canal for pike. I blanked that day, understandably. Since then there were 3 more hurricanes, i've had walks down to see the local Irwell sections and the river has changed shape with the huge flow we have had. But with time constraints the piking has been out of reach.

All in all my tally for the year stands at:

I'll leave my last video from youtube here and keep an eye out for next years adventures too, where my daughter maybe alongside me (if she doesn't throw the rod in)

Fly Fishing - It never rains but it pours - Day 50

7th November 2015

With a weekend booked off and a grayling trip booked with my good friend Mike France we was both excited, all our previous visits had been on low summer levels which had obviously affected the fishing even though we still bagged some fish and the main target, Grayling.  So we wanted some rain! It was a nice week with steady rain throughout the week meaning the river level would rise slowly and not colour up too much. With our departure time at 7.30am, the river was at the same measurement it had been all week, 40cm, 10cm higher than it's summer level which was a little surprising considering. The weather said rain till 11am where a micro-burst would be followed by sunny skies. The weather actually did that, however at 11 we was heading back to Bolton to do some pike fly fishing on our local canal. So where did it all go wrong?

Well funnily enough i have a tattoo on my neck which quotes 'It never rains but it pours' now most of you will know what this means but for those who don't it basically means when one thing goes wrong, everything does. Upon reaching our location the ducks were swimming backwards, the current to strong for them to swim against, the river was practically the Atlantic Ocean and it was up by around 3 feet (not 10cms nor the 30cms the map showed later on when it updated again) It was easily up 3 feet as the usual dry banking was now up to my butt and i'm 6ft 8. It was like we was in Blackpool in a storm with the tide coming in. Nevertheless we gave it ago, we don't get many fishing days together due to our work clash so didn't want to waste our good company. I went with a trio of nymphs. Heavy, rubber worm, Super Heavy. I still wasn't touching bottom and every cast was a strike as the leaves were horrible. So not only was the river raging, nor too coloured it was laden with thousands of leaves. We hacked it out for 2 hours before we called it quits.

Note: red line was level when we arrived (was up by 3 feet easily) green line is the usual summer level.



We came to the conclusion that would a fish sit there getting thousands of leaves smacking them in the face and building up on them, no, they would find a rock to hide behind or calm water and wait it out, now if my heaviest nymphs aren't even touching bottom, even if it was good visibility, the chances of tempting a grayling to move into that heavy flow was nigh on impossible if i wasn't at the bottom.

So off we went back home to do some pike fly fishing, Mike borrowed me his #8/9 weight set up and we was good to go, the weather here was bad with a bad cross wind and torrential rain, casting  pike flies feels so unnatural compared to the usual fly fishing so will take some getting used to but again, here, leaves were a problem. Mike Eventually hit into something big but it was solid and we guessed he'd caught the bottom but in fact it was a huge birch tree branch. We don't let things get the better of us so we landed the 'branch' posed for a picture etc fly et al.

The rain became heavier still so we called it a day, was no point making ourselves ill and risk ruining an enjoyable day despite the conditions.