Be Grateful for Grayling

The last month has been tough. Almost everyone that was brave/foolhardy enough to venture down to the river has had a frustrating time. They'll have seen more fish in the river than ever before, and probably caught fewer than ever before, if any. Some of our most proficient members have blanked, possibly for the first time on this river. Im quite certain that rather a lot more members have also blanked, but decided not to submit a Return; don't be embarrassed, we really do want to know if you blanked, and we won't tell anyone!

Apart from identifying a healthy population of Barbel in the river, and losing count of the number of Dace and small Chub that seem to litter the bottom, there are quite a lot of decent size Chub clearly visible that will sometimes rise for a dry. There are even Trout visible in some places, but they are usually stubbornly immune to any overtures, and have often been seen to move aside to let a tempting nymph drift past their resting station.

The one fish that has saved the day for me, and many others, is our lovely Grayling. We're very lucky to have them in our river at all, and if they hadn't been imported some years ago, we wouldn't be allowed to introduce them now. They can't always be easily distinguished from the Dace when they're all sitting like concrete fish dummies on the bottom, and although Dace may rise too, the rise of a Grayling is always spectacular.

A few weeks ago I spent an hour or so trying to tempt a Grayling that rose from the depths to a small dry Deerhair Sedge. It looked at it half a dozen times, and almost grabbed it once or twice, but never quite connected. This week I went back to the same spot, and once again it materialised to study the Sedge, but then vanished. I swapped to a tiny light brown dumpy CDC, and he shot up and grabbed it first cast, and I managed to keep him on long enough to fall into the net. Very satisfying. I also returned to the same spot a few hours later, and repeated the catch of what looked like the same 9" fish on the same fly in the same spot, but who knows? This is another very nice one caught by Andy W recently, and saved the day for him.

Now that the rain has finally arrived, I expect that we'll return to more typically cloudy water, and probably a bit more depth, so we'll be back to guessing where the fish are instead of spotting them. Who knows, we might even see some new Trout in the river before the season ends, but they'll have to work hard to improve on the satisfaction of landing that elusive Grayling on a dry fly.

Don't forget, if you sign up for Winter Fishing, you can carry on fly-fishing for Grayling after the Trout season closes at the end of October. I know I will. Who needs Trout anyway?

Tight Lines

PeterB