Grayling season

The grayling season is well underway here in the UK, well technically it has been since July but most of us only really concentrate on them once the trout fishing stops in October. The initial part of the season has already been kind to me and I have landed 3 fish over 2lbs from two different rivers. The River Test in Hampshire gave me the first two large ladies in a ten minute flurry of action on the Wherwell beat, my French leader was tightened by a lot of grayling that day as the fish have not been pressured heavily yet and were not as choosy as they can be.

I have also been lucky enough to land my first Welsh 2lber from the River Irfon in mid Wales. It put up a good account of itself and I was pretty sure I would lose it as it twisted and coiled in the strong currents but thankfully my buddy Nick was there with the net and the result is below. 2lbs 2oz of prime Welsh grayling.



Nick also did rather well that day, but did not quite hit the magic 2lb mark.

Quick update

Well it has been a long time since anything has been written here so a quick update just to get the ball rolling again. Lately the fishing has been dire, high water temperatures couple with low levels have left what little sport can be found in the very late evenings. I did get out a few times but it was a struggle with a few fish caught each time more by luck than judgement.

Early season was a different kettle of fish however. Fantastic would be an understatement, I wish I had kept a journal to keep track of the large fish caught but it was obscene and the cream of the crop was an absolute brute. The fish were feeding hard on a mixture of large brook duns and large dark olives and a lot of the sport was with the dry fly, nearly all my big fish were caught on a simple CDC dun pattern in a size 16 or 18.







Plenty of good fish were caught between us on dry flies early season (up until the middle of June) unfortunately the lack of water and heat soon put a stop to that for July with the fishing becoming rock hard.

The brute I mentioned was a real warrior, Nick was the first to hook him but he bore straight down under a rock and managed to snap the hook clean in half. I was luckier when my time came, he behaved himself and the fight was strong, long but not spectacular with no really long runs or snags.





6lbs 2oz of solid cock fish to crown a brilliant start to the new season.

The best fishing in the weather was in the smaller streams where the mountain springs kept the water that bit cooler and the fish feed that much harder. They are pretty places and filled with little jewels of wild trout.









Thankfully we have just had a period of very hevay rain and a flood is just subsiding, the water has been cooled and the fish are feeding once more. A quick trip last night found fish feeding hard with more fish than I deserve caught in my 3 hour session with a couple over the magical 2lb mark including one that was closer to 3. Back to normal then!

The Airflo Story

This video has been doing the rounds lately and I found it really interesting so thought I would share it.






Follow Airflo's Production Manager Richard Wothers for a behind the scenes look into the development and production of Airflo fly lines. An on the water and in the factory tour explaining Airflo's patented materials and processes.

I am actually doing a test of one of their latest lines at the moment, the SuperDri Elite 5wt floater, comparing it to my trusted Rio Trout LT, and preliminary results are good. It is a lovely casting line, floats nice and high but does not sit as straight as the Rio on the water. This problem may well be solved after it has had a chance for a bit more stretching as it was noticeably better by the end of my session with it (after 4 2lb+ fish gave it a nice stretch for me!).

I will put up a full review of it soon and will be using it a lot over the coming weeks as the business end of my new toy, a Guideline LPXe 9ft 5wt which is a phenomenal rod.

Think I may owe John Tyzack a beer

Had a session for opening day today and had a memorable start to the season with some crackers on the dry. They refused my normal split wing CDC dun but a change to a JT olive (size 17) did the trick for fish feeding hard on LDO duns.



2lbs 10oz of hard fighting brown with the JT olive in it's lip




Simple flies are ALWAYS the best!

Cheers JT, definitely owe you a pint

Dan

Snowshoe emergers

I have just started playing with snowshoe hare as an alternative to CDC in my fly box, tonight's results are a definite improvement on some of the earlier ones!

Size 14 LDO emerger

Size 19 emerger

Also knocked up a couple of caddis pupa, still not found an imitation I am really happy with but getting closer.

 

well this sucks

A few flies

Just a few flies off the vice tonight.

Why Pink?

I am sure those of you crazy enough to venture in to the tundra recently (I most certainly was) had a few bright flies with you. All year I try to fish imitatively, well almost, with drab browns and olives being wrapped around hooks to give some suggestion of life. However when that thermometer plunges and my mind turns to winter grayling I break out the flash.

Anecdotally the evidence seems to be there, most of my grayling recently have fallen to the above pink grub and it could not be much brighter. The flash in the abdomen is enhanced by wrapping the semi translucent material over a layer of silver tinsel, the photo does not do the effect real justice so you will have to trust me. Most of my friends have been doing the same as well, luminous Czech nymphs, tinsel jigs, hot spot pheasant tails the list goes on. 

This got me thinking, are we catching more fish on bright flies because we are fishing mainly bright flies, or is there something more to this… my research seems to suggest there may be but I am not sure I understand it.

During the summer trout eyes detect light mainly using a pigment called rhodopsin and have low levels of a second pigment called porphyropsin. In the winter the ratios are flipped, the flip occurs due to changes in both temperature and shorter daylight hours. Interestingly it also occurs in salmon and seatrout as they prepare to enter freshwater again.

All well and good but what does it all mean Basil, well I am not sure. Porphyropsin absorbs light at a longer wavelength than rhodopsin, the highest sensitivity for rhodopsin is in the blue/green area and this shifts more solidly in to the green area. This also means that in the winter fish eyes should be more sensitive to red (and therefore pink) light and less to blue. Could this be the reason for the success of pink and hot orange flies in the winter? I don’t really know. All I can say for sure is for the next six weeks there will be a lot of pink on my leader.