Small Trout & Large Grayling

After the deluge that came down on Thursday in the Dales all the rivers rocketed up, which was much needed and flushed the system through, allowing migratory fish to move upstream and food to be washed down to the waiting mouths.
I was going to go yesterday afternoon into evening as has been the practice over the last few trips but the water was still quite high and by the look on the river webcam still very dirty looking so I held off till today.

When I arrived at the river just before 9am it was still higher than normal and still carrying quite a lot of colour in it, undeterred I set about rigging up, this time however I switched to one of my longer carbon rods as I knew I couldn't get the job done properly with my split cane 8'6" and since snapping the tip of my longer cane rod sometime ago which I used to use for nymphing, I had to switch to the dark side and use carbon, hence no rod photographs in the pictures.





I started off downstream nymphing and within a few moments started hitting the obligatory Par which are plentiful in the river.

Starting off small, hopefully they would only get bigger, for about 20 minutes all I could get was small Par so opted to go to deeper water and see if I could connect with something more substantial.

Around 30 minutes or so later I managed to get my first trout of the day, very welcome after all the Par.










In the same run as the trout a few casts later the first Grayling fell to my nymphs, again not big but very welcome.

I continued in the deeper water with the overhanging trees as the sun was strong on the water and I was getting some interest in the nymphs and before long managed to land another Grayling this time a lot more size to it, a long fish over 45cm in length.

The sun was high now and the olives started hatching everywhere, yet nothing was moving to them at all.

 I moved to more deep water further upstream in the hope that I could entice a few more fish and it didnt take long to connect with another nice Grayling.

Things died away after a while so another move back downstream to some pacier water and I'm glad I brought the wading stick as getting to where I wanted to fish was a bit of an undertaking.

My tactic of moving to the deep water had worked and I was no longer getting plagued by the Par, instead it was lovely Grayling, I dropped a few more fish in the fast current but the first fish to the net was another small trout.

Soon after I was connected with another big Grayling which fought like hell in the fast current

 Almost a perfect specimen apart from the old predatory scar on its left flank

As I was taking the pictures I noticed a pile of crayfish shells where the birds or otters are having a feast on them, there were around 20 shells scattered over a small area.

Another couple of fish lost & I was up to my waist in water watching a red squirrel on a tree not 20ft from me and olive's hatching all over when the line went tight again and brought me back to the job in hand, another nice Grayling.

but this fish looked very familiar and the next picture will reveal all!

10 minutes after releasing the fish previously caught, here it was back again out the same run, who says fish disappear after they have been caught, there could only have been 10 - 15 minutes maximum pass from me releasing it to it being captured again for a second time.

With tired legs from constantly standing in the fast water I decided to call it a day and walked back to the car, a happy angler.