RAINBOWS ON THE WASHING LINE
When you’ve been fishing for over fifty years you tend to get a bit set in your ways. My approach to trout fishing is a conservative one and I would probably be the tackle dealers’ least favourite customer in terms of what I buy each year. I use flies like Greenwell’s Glory, Tups Indespensible and Wickham’s Fancy as regular first choices and wouldn’t recognise a Dog Nobbler if I fell over one. I still have some original Iven’s pheasant tail nymphs purchased some forty years ago in one of my fly boxes.
I often fish with just one fly but, if conditions are kind, I do put a dropper on the leader and fish with two. I’ll swap flies around and even change leaders now and then but I’m not a great innovator to say the least. This leads me to what happened when I was out fishing earlier this week on Laneshaw Reservoir which is a big water surrounded by rolling moorlands. It was a hot (approximately 20C but in direct, clear sun) and very bright day and, for Laneshaw, there was a notable absence of ripple with much of the reservoir as flat as a dark glass. Trout were rising quite regularly but mainly in the areas where there was a little ripple.
I was using a Sportfish nine and half foot 7/8 rated rod and floating line with a fourteen foot leader tapering to a six pound Fulling Mill fluorocarbon tippet. (I must say that I like this particular fluorocarbon; it’s springy, turns over well and cuts through the surface film nicely). I fished for nearly two hours without even a gentle tug; small black dries, GRHE nymph, Dawson’s Olive, Muddler – you name it and I tried it. I was so desperate that if the bailiff had turned up on one of his tours I think I would have tied him on the line and slung him in!
Then, about one o’clock, a couple of Daddy Long-legs appeared skittering down the bank. I quickly changed my fly to a dry Daddy and applied some floatant to the upper body only as advised in the glossy journals. In it went and, at last, a response. There were three or four rises but, alas, no takes and then the interest was gone. Hope died again and frustration set in with a vengeance. I was in a little bay, about fifty metres long, into which a gentle breeze was blowing and trout were dimpling and breaking the surface with their dorsal fins but not taking my fly.
Through the negative sulks a tiny positive thought entered my head, or rather a phrase – “Fishing on the Bung”. I half remembered reading articles earlier in the year about this and a conversation I had with an angling mate, Anton, during a day out at Barnsfold Water. He had used this method to catch fish when others were having fruitless and barren times. I had a vague understanding of this method of fishing and decided that I could adopt what I thought it was to the conditions at hand. So, I left the Daddy on the point and gave it more floatant to make sure that it stayed on top of the water. Then I tied on two droppers about four feet away from the point and from each other. On the droppers I tied two buzzers, a claret epoxy buzzer and a lime epoxy buzzer both size 16. Two very slim profile flies from sportflies.com that I had been meaning to try out for several weeks.
In it went, about fifteen yards out, and the line and leader settled into the small wavelets with the buzzers sinking two or three inches under the surface and being held in position between the floating line and the big dry Daddy. It did not take long either! The first Rainbow must have taken the lime buzzer as it spiralled up from the depths, for it broke the water like a little silver guided missile with the fly in its mouth and soared a good three feet into the air before diving back and surging away from me. A good two pound fish when it came to the net.
I cast out again, about the same distance, let the ‘washing line’ hang in the water and left the two buzzers to flutter about in whatever current was being stimulated by the light breeze. The only time I actually worked the line was to tighten in response to a take. This was easy fishing after the hard labour of the first two unrewarding hours. Cast and watch; cast and watch. I hooked about a dozen fish in an hour, each one on the buzzers, and landed six of them.
Then the unimaginable happened. On this occasion I had a fish hooked on each buzzer and going in different directions when, heaven forbid, I glimpsed another voracious rainbow actually chasing the big dry Daddy on the point which was being swung violently from side to side by the vigorous activity of the two captive fish. The Daddy was too frisky and eluded the predatory fish, thank goodness, and one of the others managed to wriggle off its hook but for about ten seconds it looked like a piscatorial World War Three breaking out in front of me. I just held on and watched open-mouthed. That got the adrenalin pumping a bit. I can well understand that in what is popularly perceived as a ‘relaxing pastime’ some fishermen do suffer heart attacks at the water’s edge. We all know those heart-stopping moments that come whatever the quarry – trout, pike, carp or catfish – when all our physical systems engage top gear and the fish steps on the accelerator.
This was a ‘first’ for me and I can’t wait to try this method of fishing again. I do not know if it will work the same way again but it certainly looks an excellent method for trout that are taking buzzer hatches at or just under the surface and especially on those days when they will just not look at anything apart from the hatch of the moment.
Many of the waters I fish have buzzer hatches right through the year including the winter months; all it requires is a short spell of watery sunshine and something begins to hatch. Thus, it looks as if I have another string to my fishing bow – the ‘washing line’.
The Weather
We have enjoyed an old fashioned Indian Summer in the north west. It’s been dry and sunny virtually all month up to now (26th September). In Scotland mid-month, the salmon fishers were bemoaning their fate because there had been no rain and the rivers were right down at levels that did not encourage the salmon to run in from the sea.
I went fishing this week expecting to see Rainbows chasing fry but witnessed none. I had my imitations ready but they were not needed. What it does promise is some real activity any time from now onwards once the trout realise that Autumn is here and they have a need to fill up with fry protein to see them through the Winter months.
Tight Lines!
Eddie Caldwell
