Lovely Chubbly

Now I'm working shifts it gives me time to get a bit more fishing in during the week instead of the usual sunday sessions like in the past so taking full advantage of being on nights I headed out for  few hours yesterday morning on a very low river in the Dales which I would class currently as a stream as you can see from the picture of how low the water actually is and crystal clear.

I sat and observed 2 salmon in a pool around the 10lbs mark whilst setting up and the dragonflies working along the bank flying from stem to stem, it was great to just chill out and watch nature at its best.

I opted for a dry fly to start off as there were small Grayling rising on the top flat and I knew with the water this low it might be my only chance of a fish. It didnt take long to have the first small Grayling in my hand as it sipped down the fly from the surface.

Another two of similar size followed before I started making my way downstream to another pool  where some water was actually running as the river is virtually at a stand still with the water being so low there is hardly any flow. For the next hour I never saw a fish as I sat & observed then moved through the small amounts of water that were still moving.
I came to a pool which was channelled off and the water was still running at a good pace due to this and saw a few fish sitting at the tail end so on hands on knees so as not to spook them in the clear water I started to cover them and on the 2nd run through this wee lad came to the net.

Nothing big but totally wild and gave a great acrobat show as it came to the net.  Thankfully I hadnt spooked the other fish in the pool and on the next run through another small guy took the dry.

Beautifully marked and totally wild, just the way I like them.

My knees were starting to ache, the rigours of having several operations on the cartledges so moved on down the river







On my way down to a pool which I knew there would still be some depth on I came across a couple of Chub basking around quite close to some overhanging willows in water that was more like a lake than on a river with no movement in the water at all.
I sat and watched the chub as they would occasionally come to the surface with their large rubber mouths and gulp down various bits of surface debris.

After some time of watching them I decided to see if one would take a dry fly so looking through my box I opted for a size16 deer hair sedge and cast into their cruising path and left the fly still on the surface. It took several passes of the fish under the fly before finally one came up with mouth open and took the sedge.

It really was great to see the fish cruising then stopping, starting to come up through the water and open its mouth over the fly, it seemed like in slow motion before I set the hook and the fish took off scattering the others in all directions for cover under the willows.

My patience rewarded with this lovely chub. I've had them on the fly before but not from the surface so that was a new first for me. With the other chub all scattered to the protection of the overhanging willows I moved back upstream  and sure enough the 2 salmon were still in the pool so sat & watched them before packing in as the sun was high in the sky and the temperature was rising to a heavy sweat.

Overall a great few hours on a river that's now a stream.