The Perils of Not Taking a Spare Rod With You

I went fishing on Saturday with my son Adam. The prospects were not looking good as it was very windy and lots of showers so I was not confident. We went down to the works as I expected it would be out of the wind a bit but unfortunatley as it was gusting there was nowhere to get out of it. On the way down I caught my rod in a tree branch and before I knew it I now had a 5 piece rod, brilliant! I had not taken a spare with me so persevered with an 8' 6" instead. Anyway Adam started at the sycamore pool and I started a bit below we were both using fox squirrel nymphs in olive and natural. It wasn't long before I could see Adam into a fish, result! I was soon into a nice brown too. Adam worked his way up the pool but I was stuck as were I got in it was very limiting due to the depth. I could see he was soon into other fish so I was at least glad he was making progress as he doesn't come with me regularly so its good to see him connect. He was working his way up so I moved and followed him up before I had taken a few more. There was only the odd fish rising and nothing regularly so switching to a dry was not worth it until I got to reach the trees were I decided to try a foam beetle. I covered the odd fish and hey-presto up they came a took the beetle. I ended up with 7 fish by lunchtime and Adam ended with 6 so a good few hours to start.

After lunch we went doen to the Willow pool and Adam immediately started hitting the fish, he had changed to a myfly nymph as I had spotted a couple of mayflies and John the bailiff had said earlier that there was a good amount of mayfly nymphs been seen moving about recently. I had also switched to a maylfy nymph and started to pick up the odd brown and rainbow, some up to 3lbs. I could see Adam had hit a few good fish but they came unstuck until he eventually landed a real cracker knocking on 4lb. We continued up the pool and back down into the pool below. Adam was picking up fish here and there, a good mix of browns, rainbows and grayling. By 4pm the weather was decidedly inclement and so we slunck off to the hut for a quick cuppa before the heavens opened. We stayed there until it stopped raining and I could see he was eager to have a last 30 mins. He picked up a few more including this cracker which went to 4-14.





 We ended the day at 5 both getting well into double figures, I was glad that he had had a really good day. Me well I now had a 5 piece rod and to cap it all my new waders had started leaking!