Challenging.

The drive up the Dale this morning was  fine one minute & thick with fog the next, all depending on which part of the road you were on. As I arrived at my starting point it was foggy but I knew by the drive on the way up it wouldn't last too long as the sun would soon burn it off.

A couple of geese were in the field adjacent feeding on the grass shoots & by the look of the wing on the bird on the far right it had a bit of wing damage.







The river was lower than I would have liked it to be as this part always fishes better with  a bit of water in it, but it's a nice stretch and I enjoy coming up here as there is some nice Grayling if you can manage to find them on the feed.

I stood on the bridge at the top of the stretch  looking down the water for a good 10 minutes to see if anything was moving along the stretch, normally there is an odd fish dimpling the surface below the trees in the pool, but nothing was showing today so it was a spider approach with a single nymph on the point approach as the water just wasnt that deep for a full nymph setup.

I fished my way downstream to the woods without touching anything, and I was just about to get out of the water when I heard a lot of movement in the woods behind me,  at first I thought it might have been the cattle from the field that had found a way past the gate and got into the wood, when the next thing around 10 or 11 Roe Deer came through the wood at speed, leaping the dry stone wall and taking to their heels up the field, something had certainly scared them to be moving at such speed.

I made my way out the water and headed through the wood in the direction they had come from without seeing anything untowards. A couple of large Hares ran up the banking and away from me as I entered the fir tree part of the wood.

Emerging from the bottom end of the wood back onto the river, a couple of cormorants lifted off the water, these birds are really getting everywhere now, even into the high parts of the Dales.

I do like that particular piece of river where the wood comes right down the to bankside, it just surrounds the river like a blanket.

Making my way down through the turbulent water I managed to get my first fish of the day, just as the cast was coming round and about to be lifted, a Grayling snatching at the point fly, in this case a little pink wired nymph I tied up during the week.

Fishing all the runs hard for the next 40 minutes or so produced no further fish so I opted to get out & up onto the path & head downstream to the next part of moving water.

A couple of shots along the pathway as I went.

The holly laden with berries.

and the wall thick with fallen pine needles

Dropping back into the river at my next chosen spot, a small Grayling took one of my spiders on the first pass.








I fished hard for the next hour without seeing another Grayling but an OOS trout kept me interested about half way through.

With nothing further coming I decided to head back up to the top of the section to see if anything was moving on the large flat as I had seen a few flies hatching off as the sun's rays hit the water.

As I exited the top end of the wood I was met with this big boy eyeing me up, thankfully he wasnt that interested in me, and I passed him by quietly but still keeping an eye on him as I went.

I came across a few mushrooms that had popped up in the middle of the field which were still intact although all the cattle had been walking through them.

Sitting at the top of the stretch for a further 15 minutes did not reveal any fish moving so a challenging few hours but very much enjoyable and some great sights along the way.