Easter Monday Derwent FF

My good friend Roger invited me onto his stretch of the Derwent above Grindleford. We started after a quick lunch and a beer on beat 8. There were a few fish rising in this pool just by the hut so I started there and quckly took a small wild brownie on a LDO. Covering a few more fish raised nothing. I had previously noticed a few greenfly about and so switched to a Stuart Croft greenfly, a pattern he tied at one of the Grayling Society meets during the winter. It looks like a double badger with Chartruese body and pale dun hackle. Needless to say I covered another rise and then took a small rainbow. Roger then joined in the action on the pool and started dropping them off. You get days like this were nothing stays attached and Roger was begging to have one of them!

The pool was slower moving than normal due to the exceptionally low water conditions, I recon that the Derwent must be 8-9 inches below normal summer level. The bottom is all scummy in places, it is desperate for a good flood to flush out the rubbish and freshen everything up.

I moved up to the next pool where again there were a few fish head and tailing to the greenfly I think. So I proceeded to fluff a couple of casts including getting them in suitably positioned trees which then put the fish down. I could still make out the odd flash of a fish taking nymphs, I knew reading Oliver Kites book Nymph Fishing in Practice would gel. Anyway I changed to a dark olive fsn with an olive bead to get it down and on the second trot the leader stopped dead and I struck into a magnificent wild brownie that took off! When I eventually netted it it must have gone close to 2lb. This picture was taken one handed whilst balancing my rod and the fish in the net so apologies for it having a bit of camera shake.



We continued up to the top of beat 10 and I managed a decent out of season grayling and another brown. We finished at 4.30 after a really good afternoon. These beats are excellent and with a bit more water you can see they would be even better, thank you Roger for a lovely afternoon.