Taking you on a journey....

Firstly I would like to inform the readers, the camera never made it, after a week on the window it didn't come back to life and I had to send it to the big camera in the sky.

So I had to resort to my final spare I had tucked away in my desk drawer, I just hope it lasts as long as this one has.










Today I decided to head far up the Dale with two motives, 1. To see how the sloes are coming on at one of my locations I frequent and 2. To see if I could tempt a couple of wild trout before the season closes as I will only have probably one more trip out before I call it a day for this years Brown Trout season.

Arriving at the river just after 10am I decided to head off down through the wood as the sun was strong and nothing was moving on the upper reaches and unfortunately where located the motorcycles were racing up & down the road as they always do when the good weather is upon us, making my head throb with the noise.

Walking down the overgrown path showed the signs of an autumnal day with the leaves starting to turn and drop to the floor.

Fishing isn't all about catching fish as some of my close friends know, its about everything around us from the kingfishers darting up the river with a flash of blue as they go to the small things most people dont even see, the amount of Fungi today was quite overwhelming in the matter of a 200m walk to where I wanted to start, most people would walk right over them but close up they all have an individual beauty.

Finally the hole in the wall and the river

I sat up on the vantage point on the edge of the wood and looked down on the particular pool and saw that a couple of fish were rising at the back end of the fast paced water, so decided to target the one at the very bottom of the pool and it didn't take long till he came up and took my dry fly I offered him.

almost invisible back in his home

The next few casts resulted in a couple of long range releases of small trout doing acrobatic's before I hooked into the first Grayling of the day.

The sun was so strong, combined with the reflection off the surface that my face was burning so taking a break to sit in the shade for a while and it gave me an opportunity to grab something to eat, and I had a chuckle to myself as I opened the small lunch bag my wife put together for me.....

All caught on a size 20 dry fly and scoffed straight away!

Fed & watered I headed off upstream back towards the car, releasing a further 3 Grayling as I went 2 long range and 1 at the net.

The countryside at the moment is full of colour from the leaves turning and the amount of wild berries ripening, just one of the many I passed today.

and still in flower the Montbretia

As I went picking & eating the ripened wild black berries which reminded me of the days we all went as a family to Cairnryan, before it became a ferry terminal to Ireland where we stayed on a small caravan site for the weekend with the sole purpose of picking the fruit so my granny could make jam from it, I do love this time of year.