I went fishing today, to Wych Elm fly fishery. Nothing particularly unusual about this, I go fly fishing reasonably regularly and Wych Elm is one of the 3 or 4 places I usually go. This afternoon was slightly unusual though, in that I did quite well.

Veronica and the kids had gone out for the afternoon to a kid’s party, so I was able to slope off and have a good half-day at it - typically, I only go fishing for a few hours at a time, coz I feel guilty spending too long away from the family, and also, I want to spend time with the family. The problem with fishing, rather like golf, is that it really drains time, amd time is always in pretty short supply for me. Anyway, V and the kids were going to be out all afternoon and into the evening anyway, so, no reason to rush back.

I’d planned this out in my head a few days ago, knowing I’d have a window this afternoon, and, typically, the weather turned out to be pretty far from ideal. It didn’t really look much like rain, but it was very windy, and that makes fly casting awkward and downright dangerous at times. Anyway, sod it, I’d already decided I was going to go whatever the weather was doing.

So, I started fishing around 2, and didn’t manage anything for the first hour or so. As per usual, other people seemed to be catching plenty. Hey ho. After about an hour and a half, the guy who’d been fishing diagonally opposite from me packed up his kit and wandered back around my way. I hadn’t seem him catch anything (other than some trees) whilst I’d been there. He wandered over and asked how I was getting on, and we had the usual anglers conversation that ensues from these encounters - what had I been trying? Buzzers and nymphs, mainly. How about you? Oh, I had 4 out this morning on this little white thing - he showed me a little white thing (no, it wasn’t his cock - that was massive). It was like a little white nymph with a lime piece at the head, probably size 12. Oh, right, I said (I was tying on a green and black buzzer at the time), I might have something like that. You can have this one if you like. Oh, well thank you very much, I will, that’s most generous of you, I’ll give it a try in a bit, how did you fish it> Dead slow, static retrieve. Nice one, thanks again. You’re welcome. And, as he was leaving (he wandered down to the fishing hut to fill in the returns book after that conversation, and then passed me again on his way out), tight lines! Tight lines! He actually said, tight lines! Cool.

So, I tried my green buzzer for a bit, and then tried my benefactor’s donation. Well, I didn’t get a fish first cast, or anything, but I did get my first only a few casts later. I then went on to take 5 more on that little white thing in fairly short order (over, maybe, an hour and a half). A couple of these were taken by using the bob fly I’d tied on (a loch ordie) as an indicator - something I’ve never succeeded at before, so I was very pleased with that, as there were 2 fish I probably wouldn’t have taken if it weren’t for that bob fly. Some of those fish were of a good size, too. The larger 2 were above 3lbs, with the largest definitely above 3 1/2, maybe close to 4. All were in excellent condition, and powered off as though nothing had happened when I released them.

Whilst all this was going on, I was pleased to note that most of the other anglers were doing nothing, and, I fancy, were glancing jealously over in my direction - well, maybe not, but I know I do jealous glancing when I’m the one catching nowt, so it’s a welcome change in any case!

So, now, I’m on 6 with maybe not much more than 1 1/2 hours to go (’til dark). My previous best fly-fishery trout session count is 6! Wow, one more to set a new PB! As I wandered round the lake, I was feeling pretty confident.

Shortly afterwards, I managed to hook one, again on the magic fly, but it came off almost straight away. Rats! After that, no more takes on that fly at all, and eventually I had to concede that it probably had had its moment, and I should move on. I tried a couple of other combinations (heading very much to dusk by now) without success, before I noticed that a few fish were actively feeding from the surface. Aha! I quickly swithced the point (a small black crisp-packet buzzer) for a hares-ear shipmans (size 16) and a few casts later was playing my record-breaking 7th fish. Result!

And that was it. There were no more after that. The only action I got was when I got an extremely vicious take to the dropper, a black spider. The rod was nearly snatched from my frigid fingers, and the dropper knot failed. Weirdley, the knot broke very cleanly adjacent to the main tippet, but left everything else intact. I’m not quite sure how that happened…

The darkness drove me away by 6.45. They’ve been dropped by their record label, you know. Now, that is weird.

What else is weird is that the other guy on the fishery at the same time as me who seemed to be really bagging up didn’t beat my score by all that many - we’d arrived at the same time, and it seemed like he had a fish on every time I looked round. I guessed that he’d have doubled my catch rate, easily. In the catch book, though, he’d only entered 9.

Oh, hang on, I’ve just realised - there are 2 books, 1 for kills and 1 for C&R, I only looked in the sport book; I guess if he was on a ticket which included fish, he’d have split his catch over the 2 books, and the 9 were only the fish after he’d killed his limit. Hmm. That makes sense. Bastard. Ah, well, I had a good day anyway, it matters not a jot how well anyone else did, I had fun and caught a few.

Must get some waterproofs, though.

@21:03:03 under Fishing