Fisherman's Tales

"A Day at Arnfield"  by Woz Andrew 1/12/09

I arrived at the fishery just after 8am and was first in the car park, it looked bleak. Absolute flat calm with mist rising off the water, freezing cold with a heavy frost. As I got out of the car I noticed the bright sunshine peeping over hills to the east.
Great I thought, I'm going to struggle today... (not that I was being negative lol). In the lodge I could feel the warmth radiating from the log burner, as I chatted I chatted with Alan warming myself up enough to venture back to the car to get the tackle. Alan helpful as always told me two lads had done well yesterday and which patterns I should try. Anything black was his advice and probably about 3 feet down, try a few lures like black leech or a woolly bugger.

While I was stood chatting to Alan, I could see the odd fish breaking the surface gleaming in the bright sunshine. Well almost an hour had passed and I was as warm as I was going to get all day so I decided to go for it...
I'd not fished from the lawned areas up past the lodge before so I chose to start up at the top end and as the day went on I thought I would move around the reservoir in a clockwise direction hoping to locate a fish or two.
I set up with 15 foot leader with one dropper 7 feet down from the point on a floating line. I fished for about an hour changing flies, two or three times, varying the depth and retrieve. Nothing, not even a sign of a pull.
Probably not helped by my fly lines. Every line I had with me looked like a coiled spring, as soon as any kind of retrieve was stopped or paused. I don't think sitting on their spools in my bag for the last few weeks have helped and the freezing cold was playing it's part too, even the rings on the rod had ice starting to form.

A voice from behind asked "Done anything yet?" Alan had appeared up from the lodge binoculars in hand. "No nothing, not a single pull!" I replied. Alan then recommends moving to the last peg and get just in front of the trees to the right. "You will catch there" he tells me.
With that I moved on to the last peg just before the gate. Looking out over the water, by this time the flat calm was interrupted occasionally by a very slight ripple, I decided to set up my second rod for a team of buzzers and forget the suggested lures. Lure fishing is usually a last resort when things are tough. It's not that I don't like using lures, I just have never had a good day when fishing them. It's a confidence thing, I think, until I have a cracker of a day with them, then they will always be what I turn to as a last resort so to speak.
So the second rod was set up with a tapered leader of 15 feet with two droppers 5 foot from point and the top dropper 5 feet from the middle. If I not fishing with a dry fly, then I'm usually set up this way with buzzers. I tied on what I can only describe as a red buzzer with a silver wire ribbed body on point and what used to be a black suspender buzzer, but without the foam post, on the middle dropper (removed because they didn't float, the foam I used to tie them just absorbed water and sank, lesson learned there. But one of my most successful buzzers on my local water Walkerwood). On the top dropper a red suspender buzzer with a square cut orange foam post, firstly so I can use the orange foam post as an indicator and secondly I do like the little extra wake it creates when twitched or on a very slow retrieve.
First cast with the team of buzzers in the recommended spot and a fish missed to the red suspender. And so it went for the next half hour or so, every cast brought a fish to the red suspender buzzer. But I couldn't connect, I can only put it down to my excitement and eagerness to catch that I missed so many fish.

I decided it was time to take a step back and try to calm myself down, I was so tense and angry with myself, missing so many opportunities to land just one fish. With a cup of coffee and a quick smoke, I swapped the point fly with the red suspender buzzer and a red, silver wire ribbed buzzer on the top dropper and cast back out telling myself to relax and just enjoy the takes. It worked, fish on, it went like stink, almost removing all the fly line before I got the drag set on the reel. Relief... I haven't blanked.
As the day went I stuck to the above patterns and caught and landed 9 fish all 3lb to 4lb in weight, all hard fighting fish and good sport. I genuinely missed far more fish than I should of done, and I feel quite ashamed of myself lol. I could of finished the day on 30+ fish all from the one spot on the same method using a very small selection of flies. But to be honest I'm just really pleased I didn't blank and enjoyed my first day back out fishing in weeks.
 

"A Day at Arnfield" by stuartpengs; 24-06-2009 at 12:09 PM

Conditions were a bit tricky when I arrived at Arnfield at 7am yesterday. Flat calm. There were a few fish moving but not it any great numbers. I set up with a team of dries but with the conditions as they were I soon moved on to an intermediate with a Damsel nymph. Fished just of the corner of the dam and took a fish of around 3lb within minutes of changing.

I then moved up the lake and anchored about 30 yards from the over-spill at the top end of the lake. I could see there were a few fish in this corner and my confidence in the fly was reinforced by the sheer amount of damsels trying to use my rod as a landing stage! Another fish of around 2lb quickly followed. I tried a cast as close as I could to the birch saplings that protrude from the water's edge, as soon as the fly hit the water, before I even had a chance to start a retrieve line started screaming of the reel! The fish made a dive straight for the saplings and I had to lock the reel to prevent it snagging up in the roots, which I luckily managed to do. I knew it was a good fish from the solid runs it was making and took a full 15 minutes of battling before I got it into the net. Another one of Arnfield's fin perfect doubles, 12lb!

6 more fish between 2lb and 5 lb fell to the damsel in the corner by lunch time. Conditions by this time were much the same, stiflingly humid with no breeze, except for the odd fickle breath of wind which had me chasing it around the lake, only to find it had disappeared by the time I got there!

Around 3 o'clock the breeze finally got up enough to tempt me back onto a floater, a pair of cdc klink hammers on a 5lb/4lb tapered leader. The fish were tracking upwind all over the lake, sticking there noses out taking small buzzers. Sport was frantic for the next few hours with fish coming to the net constantly as I drifted down the breeze. I fished this way until about 8pm landing and returning 18 fish, again all between 2lb to 5lb mark.

Steve Cuthbert (the owner) is a keen fly fisherman himself, and with the prospect of a fine evening rise he always makes an appearance on the lake, today being no different we both anchor up around 30 yards apart just off the lodge bank (this is the spot where the sedges tend to hatch out in greater numbers) we were also joined by another boat further down the bank.

I stick to a pair of klinks while Steve opts for some shuttlecock buzzers he tied earlier. The breeze was thankfully still with us as I strained my eyes to spot my ever more faint clinks, though I could see them enough to spot a double hit on both flies. Thankfully one of the fish didn't connect because the one that hit the dropper went absolutely ballistic when it felt the hook, cart wheeling out of the water 3 feet in the air with 25 yards of line out! This was one of the superb 5lb plus blue trout that are in the lake, you can always tell when you've hooked one of these fish because of there vicious runs. Not paying attention to the takes has cost me broken leaders in the past, as I've held the line attention wandering and one of these blues have slammed the fly and taken off, only to find I've got a missed-placed boot on the line, trapping it to the bottom of the boat `snap' before I've even had a chance to move my foot. Not this time though as a fine 6lb blue is netted.

Steve is hitting fish regularly on his shuttlecock buzzers I noticed, as are the 2 guys in the boat to my right. I'm struggling to spot my dries now in the gloaming light, and with fish now hitting sedges I decide it's time to break out the. . . MUDDLER!

Fast figure of 8 has fish hitting the fly from 25 yards out all the way to the boat. Ok, a lot of these fish are missed because of the nature of muddler fishing but hey, the sport is fantastic and I can feel the big Cheshire grin on my face as I see fish after fish flying at the fly with great crashing splashes.

I finally call it a day at 11pm, with fish rising all around like a boiling kettle. A chat with Steve in the lodge shows I did quite well for the day, with 35 fish and the next nearest catch to me with 10. This isn't to show how good I am, far from it, because I'm not. It is to show that if you have the patience and confidence to fish a dry fly you WILL catch a lot of fish in the right conditions, even though the fish aren't necessarily on flies that are on top of the surface film. Just because you can't see flies on the water, don't let this be the deciding factor. Yes you do miss a hell of a lot of takes, and if you are new to dry fly fishing you could find yourself questioning "what the hell am I doing wrong?", but that is just the nature of the beast, it's more a visual way of fishing, where sud-surface is tactile. Let's face it, if we could all see the amount of "follows" we had when fishing sub surface I'm sure we would ask the same question "what the hell am I doing wrong?"

Finally got home at 12:30 am, a full 19 hours after I set out, but boy what a day!
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Last edited by stuartpengs; 24-06-2009 at 12:09 PM.