Friday 15 June 2012

A day out from revision.


Having worked flat out for my up and coming A level exams I couldn't help but give myself last saturday off when my fishing friend Nick offered a trip down to a nice exclusive stretch of a local chalkstream. I did deserve a break I thought, all those hours of work, besides, biology is a subject that has as much relevance on the bank as it does in the class room.

The weather was lovely, albeit a little windy. The stream was up a little and flowing well owing to the recent heavy rainfall in the south. Perhaps the river held this much water prior to the days of abstraction, I'd bet it held even more! The fishing was superb, both Nick and I fished the duo with devastating effect. We entered the river by a bridge, fishing our way upstream, and very quickly losing count of the number of small trout and grayling we'd caught. The EA undertook significant habitat work here around three years ago and the fish seem to be thriving, spawning successfully on the newly put in gravels. The bulk of the trout we caught were only a year or two old, reassuring proof of successful spawning in the winters following the work.

In one pool I managed to capture my largest ever grayling on a dry fly, a fish that would probably have made 1-1.5 pounds in it's autumn condition. Being out of season and clearly recovering from spawning it was swiftly unhooked in the water and released without weighing. The fish fell to a klinkhammer expertly tied by Nick, a pattern I shall almost certainly steal for future use.

Many fish were caught and much fun was had. With my last exams on tuesday and the coarse fishing season beginning tomorrow I shall be spending my summer trying to temp all manner of species with bait and flies and shall hopefully have much more time to update this blog.

2 comments:

  1. Lovely write up Alan. You need to start taking the camera with you though! Good luck in the exams.

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  2. It's all the wading, I'm always afraid of falling in. And when I bring my waterproof game bag I get likened to foreign business man in a typhoon!

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