A fantastic Tuesday evening session

**lawrenceh_w** · 05-18-2010, 03:28 PM

After not being able to get out fishing at the weekend my good lady wife allowed me out this evening. Lucky for me my local river is 15 minutes drive (at most) from my front door. I grabbed my gear, jumped in car and set off for the river.

Nothing much showing, no mayfly as yet, not even any olives showing. It could be a hard evening. It was a reasonable warm day today (about 20C) but not much sunshine but at least the water has warmed up a fraction.

After no luck in the first couple of pools and spooking a decent looking trout on one of the bends of the river. Approaching a lovely S-bend in the river I saw a rise, and then another. The resident fish in this pool were feeding (these were probably the same ones that I lost the previous week).

I slipped into the pool and cast my klinkhamer over the rises ... no bites. I changed to a little Kite's Imperial-style parachute fly but still no joy. Looking in my fly box and seeing that there were quite a few little black flies hatching I saw that I'd tied up a couple of size 18 CDC-shuttlecock type flies (the body is a stripped peacock quill). I tied one on ... and on the 3rd or 4th cast a trout nailed it. After a decent fight I managed to land a 2.25 - 2.5lb trout. Absolutely lovely fish:

After letting the fish go back, I cast out again. I dead drifted the fly and just as I was about to lift it off the water another trout nailed the fly. A super looking 2lb fish:

A quick photo of the pool where I landed them from:

Sorry for the poor quality of the photos but I'm not very good at taking them :oops:

**ksbioteacher** · 05-18-2010, 04:02 PM

Great account of a great evening.

**mattkane** · 05-18-2010, 08:32 PM

those are NICE browns!

**Mostyn** · 05-19-2010, 05:01 AM

Hey Lawrence,

another few hours well spent! Do they stock that stretch? Nice looking fish, really chubby for wild trout! And the photos are Great.

Mostyn

**lawrenceh_w** · 05-19-2010, 07:00 AM

Hi Mostyn,

There's a limited stocking of fish (<150 through 3 miles). The size is 1-1.25lb. There's a great head of wild brownies plus some sizable chub, perch, lots of dace, some roach and the odd pike (some barbel in the lower stretches). The chub are really spooky as it's such a small river. I think it's harder to catch the chub than the trout.

The fish I caught might have been stocked at some stage in the past but have probably been in the river for a couple of years. The first one was a really chunky (and fit) fish. I think the biggest trout are about 3lb or so. A few people have caught fish of this size and they've always been hook-jawed old males.

**Satoshi** · 05-19-2010, 09:32 AM

Sorry for the poor quality of the photos but I'm not very good at taking them

At least you are very good at catching great fish!
And your photos are great too!

Satoshi

**Westcountry** · 05-19-2010, 11:49 AM

A belting brace of trout :shock:
It takes me all season to amass 4lb of trout, not just a couple of hours!

Andy

**lawrenceh_w** · 05-19-2010, 02:59 PM

Thanks Andy,

It's not a common occurrence for me. The Whitewater has a decent head of fish in it. I've seen (i.e. spooked) chub over 4lbs and saw a perch that was the size of a rugby ball! There's a decent amount of invertebrates in the river so the fish have a rich larder.

But I think the South West rivers are really gorgeous to fish ... I must try to do more fishing on Exmoor and Dartmoor ... it's great fun!