After 6 months of non-blogging I am posting again. So how did the 2nd half of my season do? Well after the last post I had a brief session over the road and caught what was probably the best looking brown trout for a long time. It epitomised a true wild brown trout, massive black and red spots and a tail like a spade. Probably weighed just over the pound mark but a cracker.
The season progressed well and I had numerous evenings with Derek above the works when the rusty spinners were falling. we had some cracking last hour's and I can remember 1 particular evening when the fall of rusty spinner was so heavy that the fish didn't have to move to the side to take, needless to say we both gave up in the end and left them to it as our imitations were lost by the multitude of naturals. I know it's a cliche but I have never seen falls of rusty spinner heavier in all the years I have been fishing on the Derwent.
Some evenings had fish rising before the spinner fall to microscopic flies which made identification difficult to almost impossible. There were also plenty of sedge about and at times a dragged sedge pattern created some exciting takes. Stuart Crofts sedge pattern proved another one of his truly successful patterns, definitely recommended. The quality of the fish was excellent with both stocked fish and the wild fish all in beautiful conditions due to the amount of fly life available, no doubt.
As we went into September the pale wateries appeared and again a good few sessions ensued before the season closed.
Yesterday I had my 1st grayling trip above the works. It was a relatively mild afternoon and the water had a slight tinge to it. I started with a klink with a small ptn off the bend but nothing. So I changed to my usual dark olive fsn and eventually managed a 10" grayling which was very welcome. After an hour I went down a couple of pools and again picked up another grayling the twin of the 1st. Then to my amazement I noticed a couple of rises so but could not see anything on the water. I put on a ldo but nothing doing so changed to a small black parachute and 1st pass over the rising fish in the main stream induced a take and another grayling. The final one was rising hard up against an overhanging bush and after a few abortive attempts snagging the branches I lost my fly and the fish went down. I finished up with 3 grayling in an hour and a half which wasn't a bad start to the grayling season.
