Posts from — January 2007

The past couple of weeks have brought a new kind of fishing low. The winter grayling fishing got off to a bad start earlier this month with high water and cold extremities. The fact that my (more experienced) fishing pal blanked as well was possibly a small consolation, but some early damage to the fishing confidence was nevertheless dealt.

Carefully playing down this feat I tried to paint a rosy picture to my brother. Images of crisp winter sunshine, secret pools and massive grayling enticed him down from the north east to spend a few days here. I described short, relaxing days spent prospecting for monsters. The evenings would bring searing hot curry at our favourite joint and a few pints of the best of beers to round things off.

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Back in December gear lust got the better of me. Having recently got a rather nice fly rod on the ‘cheap’, a conversation with a certain pal of mine put me in mind to get a really good reel to go with it. I was looking for something that would take both a four and a five weight line, so I could use it with my wee rods. After one of those hazyily remembered trips down to a fishing tackle shop I found myself the owner of a rather lovely Vosseler DC3. It made an amazing sound when you turned the spool, and oozed quality German workmanship. Only problem was the weight. I reckon for a six weight rod, it would have be fine. Great, even. But for my five weight wand, and certainly for the four weights, it just wasn’t right.

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My pal and I have been watching the weather closely over the last few weeks, desperate for a window of opportunity. The rain slacked off a little bit towards the end of the weekend, and yesterday the weather was fantastic. The river levels were also looking superb. All in all, perfect conditions for getting the grayling excited. Unfortunately, we didn’t go fishing yesterday. No, we went today.

I looked out the window at 8am whilst my tasty brown bread toasted away, waiting to receive its coating of chocolate spread. The ground was slightly damp, but the sky looked clear and in a few minutes the sun began to squeeze through the last remaining clouds, shedding weak winter rays into the kitchen. Surely the conditions were good. No rain at midnight, no rain this morning.
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I don’t know who this guy is, but I call him the Bee Man. I don’t take many photos, so I like to make the few I take special.

It’s amazing how creative the angler’s mind can get during the close season. It’s been over three months since I wet a line, and I’m beginning to feel it. Recent posts have probably hinted at my burgeoning desperation, as thoughts have turned to unnecessarily expensive fishing tackle and pathological levels of fly tying. Stuck into the fray has been Christmas, shocking weather and a move of flat. This is precisely the sort of crap that makes me need fly fishing.

Until the weather clears and the grayling come out to play, or the next three months go by and the new season comes around (it’s about 50/50 as to which will happen first) it’s the ‘thoughts’ thing. Recently, the most obsessive of these has been that of the ultimate gear-carrying system.

Up until the middle of last season I was a waistcoat man. I don’t mean any old waistcoat either, I’m talking seriously cheap, nasty and unfashionable. My brother and I wore almost identical apparel, the only difference being that my pockets contained three times as much rubbish. Given that the reverse is true of our outward mutterings I’d say that overall we were pretty even
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This week it has mostly been…raining. It’s also been rediculously windy. Right now I can hear the wind howling outside, the clouds wizzing by on the great motorway in the sky. I’m hoping the rain stops now for a week or two, long enough for the rivers to drop. I’ve been balsing on about fishing for grayling since October but the oppertunities to do so have been shockingly limited.

My flies are ready though. I’ve got enough bomb flies to destroy West Linton. Some of them even have huge tungsten beads in them. It’s going to be savage.

The Czech style nymphs are beginning to look pretty good, if I dare say so. Here’s a simple olive version, together with the sedge pupa it’s supposed to resemble. Not too bad. I think I’m ready to say that if grayling are not caught, it’s because I’m shite, rather than the flies.

Back in October I made one of those purchases. You may know the kind. Your mouse hovers over the ‘Confirm Bid’ button for a small eternity before magically clicking, with apparently no proper authorisation from your brain. There follows a few moments of suspended animation whilst the required payment is authorised, and moments later you are brought back to something like proper consciousness. Bugger. How the hell did that happen?

When my eyes de-glazed last October I found myself the owner of a Sage XP fly rod, a 9′ for a weight 5. There are worse things to be lumped with, granted. The odd thing in my case was that I’d never cast a Sage XP, or owned a rod as fast. But something told me this was the rod. I’d been working on my casting quite a lot, and having cast a few other rods I was pretty sure I needed to go faster. There was bugger all wrong with my old rods, in fact one of them was a lovely rod to fish with, but something just wasn’t quite right. Possibly this was my head.
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