Little Exe, Somerset

**Westcountry** · 05-31-2010, 01:16 PM

The Little Exe is the local name for that bit of the Exe above the junction with it's tributary the Barle. Quite how the Barle ever got to be classified as a tributary of the Exe is a bit of a mystery, the Barle is twice the size of the Exe at the junction. Under normal conditions we would call the L. Exe a river but we are in the middle of a drought so it is very much a small stream at present :(

Sunday was a day of glorious sunshine but with an uncertain wind that blew both up and downstream... but mostly down :roll:

I arrived at the bottom of the beat to find about half a dozen fish rising. There was a mixed hatch of just about everything, olives in all sizes, stoneflies (from little lime green ones up to three quater inch lumps), some sedge and even the odd mayfly (the British definition of the mayfly, E. Danica).

A small olive seemed like a good bet but the first fish just flashed at it and the rest ignored it totally. Changing to a small grey klink brought a six incher to hand and then I lost four fish almost one after the other in the rougher water at the pool head :oops: The next fifty yards produced nothing which was a bit dissapointing as it all looked good.

Then came a deeper dark pool under a hazel bush. A very small fish was rising in the tail and I thought I might as well catch it to get it out of the way before it rushed up the pool spreading panic. It rose first cast and then fell off and rushed up the pool! Next cast a trailing bramble took hold of my grey klink and wouldn't let go. This proved to be a turning point as I knotted on a bigger black klink which accounted for 5 in 5 casts!!! A quick bit of mental arithmetic showed that if I continued to catch at this rate by the time I reached the top of the beat I should be on about 450 fish. Needless to say I was somewhat short of this figure at the end of the day ;)

The deadly fly. It's just been ginked hence the rather sticky up hackle.

The trout were all in the 6 - 12 inch size bracket.

I did however connect with a few more and finished up with around twenty and almost as many lost. I can't remember a day when I've dropped so many fish, not that it really matters.

A couple more shots of the river.

Pocket water. A fish (or two or three) behind every stone in this picture although many of them were only parr.

Andy