Well, this seems like a funny time to start blogging again, particularly since I’ve done a fair bit (for me) of fly fishing for coarse fish over the summer, all of which was much more interesting, fun and blog worthy than the pretty miserable session I had at Bank House on Monday.

I’ve finally got a week off work, and so I arranged a trip to Bank House with Stuart for Monday, and I’d been really looking forward to it. Thye weather was good, calm, mild and overcast, and when we got there at around 12 noon thewre were a few fish moving, so prospects looked good. When we got going though, it seemed like there were no fish in the place, as far as I was concerned anyway, fishing nymphs and buzzers and emergers. Not a touch for an hour. At that point I switched to the only wet method which seems to work with any consistency here - The Bung. Just to get a fish on, I chucked a yellow apps bloodworm 2 foot under a bung and, sure enough, within about 5 minutes the thing slid away and I was into a nice ‘bow of around 4 pounds (pictured).

Switched back to nymphs etc (discarding the bung) after that, and 3 hours later hadn’t had a touch. Even tried a lure at one point - nada.

For the last 30 minutes, back on the bung/yellow-apps for another rainbow. Stuart, having fished bung plus lure/egg-fly most of the day finished with 3 on the bank, several lost and many missed bites. I had 2 bites all day and finished with 2 rainbows.

Toward the end, Stuart came a cropper stepping onto one of the wooden jetties, which are treacherous when wet and muddy. He landed pretty heavily and lost his landing net in about 4 foot of murky, muddy water next to ther bank, and was lucky not to break a leg, or worse, a rod! I thought I was going to have to call an ambulance. He cheered up when he landed his final fish a few minutes later - a very pretty blue.

Looking at the returns book, it seems that most fish are being caught on egg flies and ‘buzzers’ (I’m always suspicious that people don’t really know what a buzzer is after speaking to some guy last year who thought he was buzzer fishing because he had a bung on - the fly he was using was a blob) at Bank House at the moment. My suspicion, having watched people fishing, is that nearly every fish is caught from under a bung. Every body I see there seems to be fishing this method (although I did see one guy on a sinker for a bit on Monday), and it really seems like the fish don’t respond to other methods. Why is this? I can’t get a touch on any other (wet) method, but chucking almost anything bright and big under a float yields bites within minutes. I don’t have the same problem at other small trout waters I fish. Sure, the bung works at other places, but I also catch fish without it.

@13:35:39 under Fishing