Spring Day...

”He had a strange feeling as the slow gurgling stream slipped by: his old life lay behind in the mists, dark adventure lay in front.” - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings 

Rivers are like people, in a permanent change. Some rocks or stumps remain forever in the riverbed as some scars that remind you of something that happened years ago. The human physical appearance says nothing about peoples virtues and inner qualities, in case of rivers their greatness and beauty say nothing about the gems hiding under their surface.

After more than two years, during this spring, I spent again a day on one of those chalk streams which at the first sight would not be so interesting for many fly fishermen, narrow riverbed with banks covered by vegetation where casting is a true act of acrobatic. This water offered me many wonderful moments and didn’t disappointed me this time either.

The surface activity was modest compared to other times. Small pale mayflies were in abundance, so I decided to fish a modified jingler, one of my favourite dry flies and managed to fool some grayling and few trout.

During afternoon the sky turned cloudy and the dry flies lost their appeal so I swiched on nymphs. Shortely after that, my decision was rewarded. My opponent from the other end of the line proved to be a strong one but after a few minutes I managed to see him, a colourful splendid rainbow male, a real gem. I said goodbye to this creek promising that one day I’ll come back. 

About Fishing and Catching Fish...Part II

"A trout is a moment of beauty known only to those who seek it."
Arnold Gingrich

After almost a month, we spent another day on the banks of a river that fascinated us with its beauty, although not very generous with fish. The suffered failure (if we can call it like that) was attributed to the low water temperature. Armed with new strategies and a lot of hope, we started a few km downstream from the place we fished last time. The water temperature had risen by 3°Celsius over nearly a month. Small flies danced on the water surface without to trigger any fish attack, a scenario that was already known to us. The water was gin clear and the sun was generous on that April day. Rhyacophila larvae with a length smaller than an inch were hiding under the rocks. Compared to the previous session, fishing was shown to be equally difficult. The dry flies we wet have proven to be ineffective. In a later I had an attack on a PT with orange hot spot and managed to capture the first trout in this river, unfortunately also the last of the day. The extremely hard work was rewarded with an almost 10 inch trout which was more valuable to me than some other bigger fish I captured. My advise to you is to enjoy every second outside on the water, the hunt is better than the pray !