Starting to happen….
We’re just over a month into the fly fishing season in Devon now and it feels as though after the long hard winter the fish are really starting to wake up a bit. I had a great day guiding James yesterday who was a newcomer to fishing our rivers and after going through a few casts on our lake we hopped down to the river to try things out.
James into the first of the day
We’d had a heavy frost and I had worked on the basis it would take a bit of time to warm up and so we did a bit of walking to a few of my favourite spots a little further downstream. He’d fished the famous chalkstreams a couple of times and I think he liked the more rough and ready look of our wild streams especially when I had him limboing under barbed wire to get to a pool I liked the look of!
The hatches are getting more steady and the river is fishing through to about 4.30pm or so but there just isn’t quite enough warmth later in the day yet. One highlight yesterday was seeing fish rise a little more consistently than the one off affairs of late and seeing fish take an aggressive swipe at a dry is always a great sight.
I had the pleasure of guiding Paul on Monday. It is always a great time we have on the water and after a long lay up and shoulder operation he was rearing to go. We started with a casting tune up and worked on fine tuning hauling and then some single handed spey casting. He wanted to fish some new water so I obliged. As he has a insatiable thirst for knowledge I showed him how to fish spider patterns down and across which was great fun.
Paul strikes!
Our first real big hatch has been grannom and although popular theory is that the fish prefer the ascending pupae than the adult I was fishing the Wye in Wales for a couple of days last week with Ray (The Dude) courtesy of my wonderful wife (thanks Em! X). Anyway, he shouted form the other side of the river that they were taking grannom off the top. There were a few Large Dark Olives around too but not in the same numbers but I thought it might have been these they were taking but trusting his judgement I tied on a balloon caddis and picked up fish. It is funny when you see this but you get back and think about it for a bit and ask yourself a few questions (well, I do!) The main one was the fish were in or on the edge of pretty fast water making the detection time pretty short for them and so would they have hit a Parachute Adams anyway?. You can sort of go round in circles and end up over analysing and at the end of the day the fish needs to eat and if you can get the fly to him effectively and efficiently then you are in with a chance but most of all it is about enjoying the time on the water!
I get lucky every now and again!
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Tags: Fly Fishing Guide Devon, Fly Fishing in Devon, Fly Fishing School, Orvis Endorsed Guide, Pete Tyjas