If I had a choice just now I would be heading for a river for a few hours trying to catch the Graying. But being vehicularly handicapped I am pretty limited to heading to my local fishery, Swanswater with the wife’s car. Last week was a frustrating experience with the fish looking up but being exceptionally choosy and hard to catch, and when they did take they did so with such agression I was broken twice. Would today which was very similar weather wise, be the same?
A selection of “Jim’s dries” basically a buzzer with a split wing.
If anything when I arrived the water was even calmer than last week, it was utterly flat calm and there was a bit of a scum on the surface in places that looked to be from the weed. The main difference though was there were few fishing showing on the surface. There were though plenty fish cruising at a middle distance from the bank if you used polaroids and took the time to really look. The shadows of fish maybe a foot down were there to see.
I started with a dry fly using my version of the fly Jim had been successful on last week getting two fish in two casts. it was an odd dry, think of a black buzzer with orange wing buds but then add to that a split wing tied with aero wing and you ar enot far away. I tied a selection of these in Black and Green with a silver holo rib and Tan with a red holo rib yesterday all in size 16s. Almost right away I rose a fish that splashed round my fly but didn’t take it.
After that I never had another offer. Despite changing my flies to sub surface patterns and getting lots of follows and fish turning for a look, I never had so much as a touch. Sometimes three fish at a time were chasing after my nymphs, buzzers and Daiwl Bachs but they wouln’t touch it. I experimented with fast and slow retreives but it made little difference.
