boys toys!

At the start of the week I booked Friday of work with thoughts of spending a day on a favourite river further afield, wishful thinking I guess as the forcasted temperature for today was only 4,  no chance of a decent hatch on that river so it would have to be something a bit closer to hand.  I hadn't really made up my mind where exactly and to be honest I was a feeling a bit grumpy about the ever so slow spring mucking up my plans! My mood soon changed though with a knock on the door, the postman had a cardboard cylindrical tube,  my new toy had arrived!

  A few weeks back I contacted Chas burns in York as I fancied one of his wee 6ft  2/3  weight fly rods which he builds on Harrison blanks, Ive been so excited about this rod and today was the day, chestnut brown blank, pistachio reel seat with some of the whippings tipped in copper, I also picked up a nice orvis battenkill reel on sale  to complement the rod so was keen to try it all out.

I soon made up my mind where to go and found myself on the burn with bigger than average trout to give it a good test.

 arriving at the back of one I didn't need to wait long for the first riser to show, a few casts later with the new rod and its first trout was brought to hand, a fish on the olive biot klink

a rod is born!

a good hatch of dark olives today and a few risers to go for, some of them were a bit fussy,  the klink, curved cdc, and col's shuck cdc all took fish.

pound and a quarter

shuck cdc

the  burns rod feels like a fast wee rod, it was a joy to use today especially with the upstream wind, good in tight situations and had a plenty of power to bully big trout out of any snags, it made me smile, not an easy task!

1lb 10oz on the brown wire nymph

another on the nymph from the same pool

I ventured up to the tributary of the burn  that col lost a big fish in on a few days ago, i saw only one riser which I hooked, looked like  a nice golden yella fella too but the fly sprung back at me, definitely not the big fish col lost, but still a nice one.Walking back downstream on the main  burn  i  spotted a couple of stragglers on the fin which kept me occupied, I brought one of them to hand to end a good afternoon.

a good first outing for my new rod and temperatures are on the up for the weekend!

Trout fishing Sudoku

Sometimes trout will take the first generic imitation you present to them, but on some occasions you may come across a grand master trout that's seen it all before and been around the block a few times, every pattern etched into his grey matter . Today I came across a grand Jedi master trout.

I thought it was going to be a walk over, a shucked olive will do the trick i thought to myself, but this fish detected my presence when I tried to wade into a drag free position and stopped feeding, so I continued  upstream only to find no risers. Back downstream again there he was rising again, I decided to stick to the bank although I know he was lying in a difficult spot difficult that is to achieve a drag free presentation, meanwhile another fish was also rising 20ft further up the pool. First to try was the shucked CDC, then the curved CDC, then the dhe, then a ginked up spider , i went smaller then  bigger, I just couldn't get him to take,i spent probably a whole hour casting at this fish, and I was considering throwing in the towel and going for the other fish just upstream,but  then I decided to try a CDC and elk i must admit this is not a fly i would consider in a upwing hatch however i beleive it's inventor uses it exactly for that . First cast he hammered it, the grand master was beat but I'm sure he will remember the footprint of the CDC and elk , etched into his memory and give other   anglers a real conundrum.

Yoda