Fortunes Turned

This morning I was debating where to go as the weather forecast wasn't too great, high winds with heavy rain showers clearing up in the afternoon forecast. I drove past one local river and made my mind up to target a stretch I hadn't fished since the start of the Grayling season, arriving on-site I didn't find any other cars in the car park which wasn't surprising with the weather.
After walking upstream to try and get away from the cold upstream wind I found a spot to my liking where the wind wasn't really effecting the water and set about fishing a team of spiders. I was very surprised to find that it didn't take long to I struck into my first fish.

Was this going to be my Brown trout season off to a start.......Nope you guessed another Grayling.
A few more casts and another small Grayling fell to the spiders.








Before long a couple of fellow anglers came walking up the bank and turns out one of them was Pete a long-term reader of the the blog, finally nice to meet someone who enjoys some of my mishaps and ramblings. He seemed quite normal so not all my blog readers are mad. Nice to meet you Pete & I hope your day went well after we parted.

As Pete & Lee made there way upstream and left me to carry on I finally got my first brown trout of this year, by no means a monster but it got me off the mark, a fish very welcomed indeed.

After an hour or so and with nothing else to show for my efforts I bumped into the lads again who had both managed to capture a Grayling each so things were not looking good on the trout side of things, a quick brew, a chat & finally we started seeing a few hatching flies coming down the river but as the case in previous weeks not many fishing showing for them, we all walked downstream in search of shelter from the wind and hopefully some trout.

I had just crossed over the river when I saw a trout rise in a small riffle behind the main stream, so cast over to it & bang fish on.....No mistaking this for a Grayling as it tore off and started doing acrobatics, a nice trout. After a merry dance around the scoop net it finally slipped in and I looked down at a lovely overwintered brown trout

Now this was definitely worth waiting on, first cast over it and for this to just sip down the fly was well worth the wait. So after a few snaps off it went to give someone else some sport.

Continuing downstream a few more flies started hatching and every now and again the odd rise to take them.












It seems like the duck was now broken with the previous fish as trout started gracing my net. Nothing of any size but it certainly was a welcome sight to finally see some trout.

A few fish to the net & a few lost fish...wont say I'm slowing down, will just say they were lightning strikes... and believe it or not the last fish of the day yes you guessed another Grayling.
A lovely day, a few fish finally in season and a chat to a blog reader, what could be better than that.