Home Features Diaries Digital Diary – Over the Rainbow

Digital Diary – Over the Rainbow

April 13, 2004

Since the river season ended, March and April have been good so far, with the Fishingmagic flyfishing fish-in being a great success (as much as anything for introducing several more anglers to this enjoyable branch of our sport) and that the trout have been, for the most part, feeding.

Graham and another rainbow that fell to his ‘special’ pink buzzer (click for bigger picture)

My latest trip was to a semi-private trout lake (a publicity ban prevents me from saying where it is) where Dave Colclough and I met up with our old pal Dave Chilton, boss of Kryston. Dave had brought a portable DVD player with him and we later spent an enjoyable half hour having a brew and watching some exciting footage of him playing bonefish on a fly rod in Cuba. Wow, do those fish go or what! He was playing one fish for about 10 minutes and me and Dave Colc ventured a guess at the weight, which varied between 6 and 12lb. When Dave pulled out a two-pounder we could hardly believe it.

Anyway, Dave Colc and me were into trout pretty quickly, both of us catching on GRHE’s fished slowly along the bottom. And then we struggled until we changed to a black buzzer. And then the same thing happened again, more fruitless retrieves until we changed to something else.

Of course it was the ‘new fly syndrome’, as we call it, where you catch a trout every time you change the fly but just the one, no more. And no, it’s not always due to the fly being more buoyant because it hasn’t become thoroughly soaked, or some other, obvious, reason, why a new fly is behaving differently, for you can tie on a new fly of the same pattern and still not catch a fish.

No, it’s one of those funny peculiar little things in angling that defy logical explanation. We don’t fight it any more, we just keep changing the flies for as long as they are in that kind of mood. It never lasts though, and sooner or later you find a fly that they want consistently (or they lose the ‘new fly’ mood) which you stick with for most of the day.

Dave Chilton into another good fish (click for bigger picture)

Anyway, the three of us went ‘all around the houses’ until we ended up on one of my ‘special’ pink buzzers and made a decent catch. My best fish was just short of 6lb and we all had a few from 4lb to 5lb or so.

Dave brought me the goody bags that Kryston have sponsored for the Blue Pool Teach-in next week, and he also brought us an unlabeled sample of his new Krystonite mono which looks to be a bit special, to say the least. But time will tell and a full review will appear as soon as I’ve given it a decent trial.

Easter Monday afternoon, Danebridge Fisheries, Near Wincle, Cheshire
Me and that other old fart Eddie Bibby had five hours at Danebridge Fisheries yesterday, Easter Monday afternoon, and found it tough going, considering the water is usually much easier than it was. Very few fish were rising to give away their location, and they weren’t ‘having it’ at all. Mind you, this year the owners have stocked the water with a bigger average size of fish, so it’s worth having to try that little harder to get one or two.

Hard but happy fishing. Ed and his Blue trout (click for bigger picture)

We started the day fishing my little ‘Lily the Pink’ (as Ed has christened it) buzzer at about 5ft deep, me on a 4lb tippet and Ed on a tippet of 5lb. I handed the buzzer to Ed with the immortal words, “You’ll catch on that Ed.” I had a ‘bow of about 2