Feedback & Reports

cold day with bitter north wind 5 trout 8-12" all on PT nymph hooked and lost 2 on the dry at lunch time

5 Trout

Tough fishing with water low for this time of year. 2 small wild brownies caught on PTN.

2 Trout

No catches see quite a few rises but was a bright still day and fish were turning from the flys

Could not find any of the access/parking points. I thought the map quality/directions sheet were very poor. 25 Mike round trip and no fishing.

Cold downstream wind. Tough day

Did not fish

The morning session was unproductive in the complete absence of fly, rises and any interest in my various nymph offerings. With a blank looking increasingly on the cards I noticed a dimple in some slack water on the opposite bank. Then another. And another. Two fish feeding quietly and efficiently on a trickle hatch of LDO. No more than 2-3 seconds of drag free drift. By some miracle I caught them both in Comparadun, beautiful hard fighting fish of 16” and 15”. A 12”er followed a little later further upstream. A lovely afternoon in the most picturesque setting.

3 Trout

Blanked. Was a bit unlucky - two rolled off the hook, but it was very tough today with only three bites in all. A few sparse LDO hatches for an hour or two in the early afternoon and that was when all the bites came, completely dead either side. Not many trout rising to them or taking sub-surface, and unfortunately those I did see were on the fast side beyond fast current requiring a reach cast for a few seconds presentation, or in dead slack water making presentation very difficult. Tried everything from dries to nymphs, spiders to black wooly bugger - 2 of the three bites came to the nymph. Nice to be on the river again though, it's beginning to wake up again and the birds certainly appreciated the few mayflies more than the trout - grey wagtail, dipper, and a few early swallows back hawking over the river. Lovely to be back too after the long winter and last few weeks of deluges!

One other thing maybe to note - I saw five dead toads in the bankside shallows, all at different places which was a little alarming. None showed any signs of predation. No dead fish or obvious signs of pollution. Perhaps an amphibian disease is striking at the moment? Or maybe correlated with high toad activity and visibility at the moment - have seen a lot of toadspawn and tadpoles recently too. But I've never seen a string of dead toads like that before. Did hear at least two more croaking in bankside cover.

1 Trout

5 Trout