Saturday 20 June 2009

Ellastone 'a lesson in matching the munch'

Went to Ellastone tonight again, started to fish at the bridge section, the wind was very blustery and with a nice hatch going on the fly life was struggling to get off the river and therefore a nice easy prey for the trout, rises were almost everywhwere and it reminded me of a mayfly hatch when trout are hitting them, I started to fish off the bank side to stop spooking any fish but could not get any takes on quite a few of my favorite flys, i have been recently studying fly life with reading up and photos ect supplyied by Matt ( north country angler), I decided to wade in at the bridge end to see what was coming off, i started to see small olives saling down with wings upright drifting all over the place like windsurfers, the problem was i could not take any of them to inspect because the trout were nailing them before they could even get to me!! eventualy a got one and they were the smallest olives i have seen, they were around size 20/22 with very slim light brown ribbed body and upright wings, nothing in my fly box could match the size so i did the usual and went through the fly box, the fish were taking them and other flys were totally ignored, this was a good lesson for me, i had been standing in the river for over a hour trying to get a take and the fish were rising right around me, one very good sized brown was rising 3ft away from me and i stood quitely and watched the fish for over a half a hour, this was amazing and i saw how a trout works while feeding, it would drift down to its holding postition and watch a drifting olive and always swim back when the fly had gone over its head and calmly sip the fly away, this made me realise how important it is to cast say 10ft over where i had seen the rise, i had stopped fishing now as i new i would have nothing in my box to succeed, this was giving me far more a lesson than reading any books at home, i also noticed that the smaller fish would be more aggressive and hit flys harder making more of a surface splash, the large trout would take a olive somtimes with hardly any disturbance.
On studying the fly i made my mind up that the olives were bwo, but not too sure because of how small they were?
I did catch nine fish in the end when the light dropped and the black sedge took over the olives, including a rainbow that took me on merry dance, all caught in the space of a hour..

Thanks

Glen

1 comment:

  1. Sounds like an interesting evening Glen. If your little flies had three tails then they will have been bwos, if not, then more likely pale wateries. The size of flies can vary a lot river to river - bwos can be quite small. The three tails and large hindwings is the giveaway.

    Good fishing and nice report.

    M

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