My Last Trip on the Wye until April......

I had quite a pleasant surprise yesterday on speaking with Mr Pointon. I had been under the impression that fishing on the Haddon Estate Wye for Grayling finished on the 1st of January when in fact the last day is the 6th so I managed to sneak in an extra morning's fishing. I checked the weather and all looked quite well for this time of year. I was up bright and early only to find that it had been snowing so wondered whether my extra trip would go ahead after all. Nonetheless I packed up the car filled one jeans pocket with pork pies the other with Quality Street, and made my way up the Buxton Road. All was not well as I drove over the tops, the road was covered in snow and I was sliding everywhere. I'd texted Jan the keeper early in the morning to see if it had snowed over Bakewell way and he'd replied that it hadn't, so I plodded on hoping that the weather hadn't changed.

As I got closer to Bakewell the weather improved vastly and as I parked up near to Caudwell's Mill I noticed that the air temperature was a good couple of degrees warmer than at home in Leek too. I got tackled up and made sure I'd got a few extra layers of clothes on. I hadn't fished since the beginning of December probably the longest I've gone without fishing in the last three years so I was hoping that a dip in confidence wouldn't affect things too much.

The going was tough. I visited all my dead cert spots and for a good couple of hours I didn't have a bite. What made it worse was that on bumping into Jan on the river bank he assured me that the river was fishing it's head off just a couple of days ago.....

I eventually managed a few small grayling but thought it might be time to head back up towards town, near to the pumping station to try some faster, shallower waters. I was soon into one or two fish, the best of which being the one in the pic above that came to a tiny pink shrimp on my top dropper...a beauty...

Farewell wonderful Wye....I look forward to fishing for the troots with the dry later on in the spring...

Slainte

David

Windy, Wet yet Wonderful Wiver Wye with JC

I get to meet up a couple of times a year with Johnny Colemans, usually, I tend to get called away from the fishing session early, or it's raining cats and dogs...the latter was the order of the day last Tuesday, along with a good gust of wind too....not nearly enough bad weather to put these two eager anglers off so it was an early meet up at the car park and on to the river by 10am.

I hadn't fished this stretch for a couple of weeks and it is amazing how long it can take to get your eye back in after being away for a wee whiley. I was getting dozens of takes....pretty furious ones too...but struggled to hook in to many of these angry Grayling. I reckon I managed to land a fish for every 6 takes I missed.

It was good to catch up with Johnny..he clearly needed a fix of the river after such a busy time at work with new jobs and at home with new children. He said he'd be happy just to be near the river to chill out a little. I knew that was code for he'd like to land a few ladies though....

We moved around a few favourite swims and had a good few fish between us, nothing huge but fantastic sport just the same....

Cheers for a great day JC....

Woody

Looking for the Lunking Ladies on the Wye

I was desperate to get out fishing again this week as I'm away in Scotland and then London with work for a good couple of weeks quite soon. Earlier in the week, Jan, one of the river keepers, very kindly showed me around one or two spots on this lovely Derbyshire river. I remember swearing every few yards or so as I came across fishy looking swims over and over again. Other anglers reading this will know exactly what I mean about Tourettes syndrome setting in as you round a bend and find a deep glide, or a fast riffle dropping into a deep trench, or rippled moving water that has fish written all over it. If you'd have heard me a couple of days ago, when first visiting this stretch of river, you'd have thought I'd turned into Glen Pointon, or worse still Roger Mellie (the man on the telly).

I put up a pic on the previous post of my first decent sized grayling of October on this particular river. Having seen the pic, one or two readers have given me a pound and a half for it...any advance on that? I'll certainly be wanting more than that for the lovely fish I caught early this afternoon which is shown in the two pics on this post.

I started out fairly early today. I got the car packed up even before the kids were up and ready for school. It was a cool and completely overcast morning and I thought it looked almost perfect for grayling fishing. There was a spot of rain in the air and at first, I had a job to get organised and my OCD started to kick in when I realised that, because of the low air temperature and the threat of rain, I may have to wear a coat. Those that have fished with me know how my head goes if everything isn't just how it ought to be....

And so I made my way down the river, trying desperately to remember all of the spots that I'd fished a few days ago and where Jan had pointed out features, swims and runs to me. Once again I was completely taken aback by the beauty of the place, the river and the whole valley really. It reminds me so much of Pitlochry in the Highlands, you're never far away from a dipping dipper, a fleeting kingfisher or the eerie scream of a buzzard above the trees. There's many a spot that wouldn't be out of place in a Turner. The banks are a pleasure to fish, yes it can be a challenge to the angler to get the right cast in without wading, but all the more rewarding when the take comes and a fish ends up in the net. I've found that, even with my 10ft 4wt Streamflex, it's nearly always possible to make that cast whenever, and wherever you want to.

I was taking fish all the way down the stretch and once at the end, I sat down and tucked into my lunch and took in the surroundings once more. I had a leisurely stroll back and had a particular spot in mind. I'd fished it in the morning and dropped a couple of fish but was sure that it was holding a good few more. I'd got an hour before I was to leave in time for the school run so I had enough time to get a few casts in before heading off back to the car. I was dropping fish again and was getting a little frustrating and started to think about my last cast. This time I'd cast just that little bit further, and nearer to an overhanging branch. No sooner had the drift began than the tip of the line shot away and a good fish was on. I new it was a decent fish immediately and I was desperate not to drop this one as I knew it would be a perfect end to the day.

After a decent scrap, this lovely fish came to the net. It had taken the point fly which I was surprised by given that almost all of the others had taken the dropper.

Another superb day's fishing on the Wye. I'm hoping the grayling just keep getting bigger and bigger....

David

A Few Fine Autumnal Hours on the Wye with Pointon....

Enjoyed a few hours on the Wye with Glen yesterday. I called round to Pointon Palace at around 2pm to find him collapsed in his living room with piles of paper all over the floor along with an upturned child's size desk and chairs. A used, and unemptied potty sat in the corner and it basically looked very much as if he'd been burgled by angry toddlers. Amongst the debris and empty Benson & Hedges packs was one Tarquin Pointon who I'd clearly woken up when I knocked on the door. He swore at me in his strongest Liverpudlian accent, asked me what time of day it was, I think, swore at me again and slowly began to get his act together to eventually leave the house and get off to do some fishing....

Things must be on the up for 'The Vital Spark'  because the first thing I noticed was that the space on the drive that is usually occupied by the knackered old VW van was now occupied by a snazzy looking Porsche Cayenne.....and so, this turned out to be our choice of transport for the day. I half expected to find a tray or two of Ferrero Rocher and a bottle or two of Asti Spumante on the back seat to accompany our arrrfternun fa*king tea.

And so, it was on to the river with a couple of hours of day light to spare and Pointon was straight into the Grayling. The fish were hammering the dry fly and great sport was had for the rest of the day. The rivers in Derbyshire and Staffordshire have benefited from the much needed rainfall that we've had in the last couple of weeks and now that the warmer weather has returned, the fly life has gone bonkers with the many hatches that are coming off during the day. On the last day of the season I had one of those mental days at Dovedale where hungry fish are rising everywhere and nailing every fly that they can in preparation for the winter to come. Many of the bigger brownies came out to play, each taking olive patterns and sedges.

The pic below shows Glen's biggest fish of the afternoon session. I don't know why he has got the expression on his face but he went down hill after that, he gets tired in the early evening, and so It was time to get him back in to the Porsche and back to the sheltered accommodation.

On the way back, Glen and I agreed that we'd had a fine afternoon and that we'd enjoyed travelling in style in the Porsche....but, at the end of the day..it was no LDV.....

Woody

Early September Angling on the Rivers of Staffordshire and Derbyshire

What a mixed bag of fishing the last week or so have been. I've been out and about nearly every evening and yesterday, for a full day on the Derbyshire Wye.

Earlier last week I had a walk down to the upper Churnet upstream of Leek, only a field or two away from where I live. Whilst I did see quite a few fish, rises were few and far between. Cattle are grazing nearer to the river than I've seen then before and there are quite a few sections where I usually do quite well, that the cattle now use to wade in and drink so I wonder whether this has moved the fish about a bit. I still managed to catch a few on the dry though and can't help noticing that they seem to be growing rather quickly which is great news for the seasons to come. In the next month or so,  after the end of the trout season, I'll enjoy walking the dog down there and keeping my eye out for the odd, much larger silver fish that may make it there...and don't tell me there's no chance as that's what folk said when I asked if it were possible for these large silver fish to make it to the upper Dove, or if sea trout could be running in the Dove, which they of course are...I know, I've caught one.

Anglers of Derbyshire and Staffordshire will recognise the fisherman in the pic above, and he and I visited Ellastone and Eaton Dovedale last week too. Many anglers have found it tough on the Dove this last few weeks, largely due to lack of water. We tried Ellastone together and other than dropping quite a large Grayling in the fast water at the top of the DRAC stretch, we had no luck at all.

On a couple of occasions, I headed down to Eaton Dovedale and had more success on the nymph for the Grayling than on the dry and the trout do seem to be hiding away

I bumped into Brian on Saturday night, he'd had quite a bit of success on tiny dry flies during the daytime but he noted that rises began to disappear during the late afternoon period. Light conditions do seem to be changing and Autumn is definitely on it's way and fishing, especially late on in the day just seems to have gone a bit weird.


















Yesterday I had the last minute opportunity to meet up with Glen and JT at the Peacock Hotel in Rowsley in preparation for a full day's fishing on the Derbyshire Wye.

John took me to a couple of places I hadn't visited before, where, because of the tricky swims and bank vegetation, we took it in turns to cover the grayling and brown and rainbow trout that were abundant there. We had some great sport on the LTD sedge and other sedgy flies. Among others, I had a cracking grayling of about 1lb 1/2 and JT had a huge brownie. Cheers for the help JT..

Again, late on in the afternoon rises were few and far between, but wherever we saw them, we'd creep up and carefully present our tiny dries to them, hoping to induce a splash or two.

Late on in the day, Glen had great fun on a run where fish were switched on to a spinner fall and he managed about half a dozen fish in 10 minutes or so.....

Next Sunday, there's quite a few of us on the Wye and a couple of weeks after that, 7 of us head up to the Isle of Islay for trout, salmon and sea fishing.

Slainte

David

There's Gould In Them There Hills.....

Ian Gould's first visit to the beautiful Wye in Bakewell and the tourist board marks the occasion with a specially commissioned balloon.




Bank holiday Monday the 30th August had been a long time coming. I'd booked onto Derbyshire's unbeatable river Wye along with Ian Gould of Errwood Fly Fishing Club. Ian enjoys reservoir fly fishing, and the occasional river fishing and really fancied landing a large Wye Grayling.

From the early hours of Saturday morning right up until lunch time, we'd had heavy downpours in Leek and I wondered what the weather would be like in the hills above us. Those very hills that supplied our destination with its waters. One or two anxious texts between Ian and I resulted in me piling the kids into the van to speed off towards Bakewell to check out the conditions. I needn't have bothered, the river looked perfect, and as long as we didn't have too much more rain, all would be fine as long as the wind dropped.

And so, at 10am Ian was collected from Buxton and we made our way towards Bakewell, very much looking forward to an incredibly large breakfast to see us through the day. I'd forgotten the fact that it was bank holiday and basically, every parking space in Bakewell was spoken for so we'd collect our tickets and start fishing early instead.

Ian had set himself a target early on. As long as he went home having caught 1 of each of the native, Grayling, Brown and Rainbow Trout, he would be a very happy man indeed, and he was soon off to a perfect start with this wee Rainbow.

What started as a chilly start, soon turned much warmer and I was glad that I hadn't bothered with my waders or jacket. There was loads of fly life and plenty of rises to be seen but during the day, it was smaller fish that we seemed to be attracting to our tiny flies. Griffiths Gnat and Grey Dusters seemed to do the job with the LTD putting in a rare, and certainly the first for me...wait for it...blank! Maybe it's time for a new LTD Pointon....the fish have seen it too many times! :-)

During the evening we made our way towards the town and enjoyed quite a few small Grayling to our tiny flies. The town centre had been incredibly busy during the day and unfortunately, the lunkers were not particularly hungry, in fact, they were that full they'd gone off to bed early. Despite this though, Ian managed a lovely, touching 3lb Brownie which was a classic end to the evening.

Ian and I had a great day, and Ian's aim of 1 of each of the native Grayling, Rainbow and Brown Trout was achieved. Come on Ian...get on the Wye on the 12th September!

Thanks to Richard W for spending time with us explaining the spinner fall and indeed providing us with a couple of his own patterns for the evening rise.

We finished up chatting with Dave and Jan besides the Wye in the town centre and I thought it was a good time to fetch out this week's mystery dram from the van......a lovely single cask, single grain whisky, 40 year old Invergordon, which was about the same colour as the sunset reflected on the river in the pic above...good health!

Slainte

David