The Early Angler...

Reaps the rewards. With the last couple of days being absolute sizzling but the rivers still carrying extra water from all the rain during the week, I decided to see if the early morning outing would benefit  before the temperatures rose again so this morning juts after 5am I headed up onto one of the Dales rivers.

As I knew the river was still up on normal levels and still carrying a bit of colour so I opted to start out on the nymphs.

3rd or 4th pass & I tightened into the first fish of the day a small trout.









Slipping back into the run it wasnt much longer till the line went taught again and this time a small Grayling graced the camera.

With nothing further I started fishing the pocket water upstream and was rewarded with the first good fish of the day, The nymphs had just passed over a rock with the water rushing over it & dropped into the slack water behind when I felt a fish take the nymph, this time some weight to the fish & I knew instantly by the characteristics of it it was a trout.






I hadn't even covered the first 50m upstream and 3 fish in the net already, was it going to be one of those days, even at this early time the sun was up and quite strong, It was going to be a very warm day.

Moving upstream a few smaller grayling took a liking to the nymphs and the sport was good.

I slipped into a deep hole below a set of rapids and the first pass over them the line went tight & took off like an express train and ping the line went slack, a nice trout by the feel of things but hey ho no use wondering over it. I gave it 5 minutes to settle down again and put the nymphs through the same run this time picking up a decent Grayling.






A short time afterwards another trout slipped into the net.

minus the bottom piece of its tail.

It was turning out to be a better morning than I had anticipated albeit the heat at such an early time but the fish weren't deterred as yet by it so I continued to fish on upstream.

I got to a pool I always like to sit & watch and this morning was no different after 10 minutes of watching from afar on the bank I had identified 3 good fish all rising to something on the water which at this time I could t see what it was, it was a no brainer the nymphs were off  & replaced with a dry fly line and a couple of small flies to test out the water as I wasnt sure what was hatching.

I lined up the closest fish that I had identified and first pass up it came, I had chosen wisely.

Looking across for a few seconds to see if my next target was still moving & yep it was, so a quick re position and a couple of cast later & it too came to the net.

That was the couple of trout out the way I had identified am sure the remaining fish were Grayling by the splashy takes and a couple of smaller Grayling had also started to rise but as yet I still couldn't see anything that they were taking.

Needless to say the next 40 minutes or so was hectic with missed fish, caught fish & lost fish and it was absolutely brilliant seeing these fish come from deep in the water to take the small size 20 fly I had chosen.

I continued on for another hour with lots of smaller grayling putting in an appearance & taking the dry. Folk were up and about now and the first couple of dog walkers were along the opposite bank letting their dogs do what they wanted even though they seen me standing there fishing, so with this and the hot sun starting to get really strong I decided to call it a morning, 0940am & I was leaving the river but I was leaving a very happy angler.