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
