Member Phil Rees has kindly emailed me a short report of his evenings fishing, on the night of the members session, friday 21st september.
click here to see a general report on how the event went.
Member Phil Rees was infact top rod on this evening and this is what took place....
“It was a nice evening for the Friday Members
session, maybe too nice! It was quite sunny, with very little wind which
often makes angling difficult. However, the fish seemed to be near to
the surface; unfortunately they were not easy to tempt! I fished on
Pontoon 1 because I often prefer to have the wind a little in my face as
it seems to bring the fish closer in. I started off with a ‘Daddy’ and
had a few swirls but no takes, so changed to a Klinkhammer instead. The
fish were still a bit choosy, but I managed to catch a couple before
breaking off for Steve’s excellent curry. Both were less than 10 metres
out, so no need for long casting. Nathan took some video of me playing
one of the fish; I hope that he cuts out my inept attempts to initially
net the fish before publication!
In
the fairly short period I was eating, it got a bit darker and more fish
had started to rise. Even so, they were still wary until it really went
quite dark, when I caught 2 more. In this period, it got so dark that I
struck at a rise that was not even to my fly (it was difficult to see).
Having said that, one fish I caught hooked itself because I thought it
had not risen to my fly. Obviously time to pack up and celebrate being
‘top rod’ for the evening. However, thinking about it on the way home, I
wondered if dry flies had been the best option because the fish seemed
to be mostly feeding just sub-surface; if so, a buzzer or a nymph may in
retrospect have been a better approach that I might consider in the
future.
Having
the opportunity to also fish on Saturday morning, I found that Curleys
was even calmer and sunnier than it had been on Friday night. Even so,
some fish were still showing on the surface. I tried the klinkhammer
that had been successful the previous night and small black gnats, but
the fish were being very coy and not taking on the surface. Asking
around, I found that fellow member Jim McGinley was getting some action
on a black fritz less than 2 feet down. Consequently, remembering my
homeward bound thoughts from the night before, I decided to try a diawl
bach fished shallow and slow. Although fishing was still not easy, by
using this approach, I managed to catch 5, missed 4 others and lost
another at the net. So my personal learning was that although dry-fly
fishing can be great fun when fish are surface feeding, I will
definitely be tempted to also try shallow fished nymphs as well in the
future.”
Tightlines,
Nathan
nath_bailiff@hotmail.co.uk
