Yesterday, me, Dave and Ed decided we'd risk a day's fly fishing on my local Loynton Trout Fishery, near Eccleshall, Staffordshire.Risk? Well, the weather suggested we wouldn't catch anything, for if there's one thing that rainbow trout hate its hot, bright sunshine and warm water. And yesterday we had the lot - in spades.
Even the staff that manage the fishery were honest, telling us that there was very little chance of us catching anything. But what the hell, in for a penny in for a pound, 20 of them to be exact, which is the cost of a sporting ticket which means you can catch and release fish but not take any away. I paid an extra fiver to allow me to take two fish, not because I felt any more confident than Ed and Dave, but an old lady had asked me to try to catch her a nice trout for her tea. If nothing else, it gave me an extra incentive to beat the blank that everyone thought was inevitable for the three of us.
Now anyone who knows me will know that I'm no purist, so I had no hesitation but to fish with a bright yellow blob under a bung, something I very rarely start with as I prefer to try to catch something with more traditional methods, only shortening the odds with a fly under a bung either when I've run out of other ideas or towards the end of the day when I just want to sit and 'float fish'.
I fished the blob at a depth of 5ft and within minutes had a trout of about 2.5lb in the net. Dave and Ed struggled on for a few more minutes before Ed gave in and went on the same method, although he did try different flies before ending up on a yellow blob. Dave, stubborn bugger, carried on for most of the day with traditional methods until in the end even he gave up.
Too late though, as they both returned a blank, just like everyone else who fished that day. I had another trout, this one a much nicer looking fish and weighing about 3.5lb.
So I was happy, the old lady was happy with her two nice trout, and Ed and Dave were happy anyway, as it was such a nice day just to be out and fishing, regardless of the outcome.
Loynton has a very nice Orvis shop, but none of us bought anything, honest (you never know who reads these things do you?).
Graham said :
ReplyDelete"Loynton has a very nice Orvis shop, but none of us bought anything, honest (you never know who reads these things do you?)."
Graham and I had a lot of fun though,trying to convince Dave (unsuccessfully)to buy lots of expensive Orvis products that he didn't really need but should have !!
That was after muggins here bought a new bag and Dave bought bugger-all!
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