Our first joint fishing trip of the year saw Beardy Paul and I spend a morning at his new local venue: Fordwich Trout Pond, managed by CDAA. It was a bright, sunny morning but with a pretty heavy easterly wind (more on that later). The wind made casting pretty tricky but the pond has a range of bays and promontory’s which make it easy to find a decent position, no matter which way the wind is blowing.
We decided to start on the south bank with the wind at our left and fishing across the wind into the westerly bank where, in theory, the wind had been blowing the food for the last few days. We both started off with buzzers on the point and a dropper, thinking the bright conditions and recent warm weather would be perfect for buzzer fishing. How wrong we were!
To cut a long story short, we fished for six hours trying every different type and colour of fly, different depths, different retrieves and every different position around this small lake. The result? Three small course fish and a jack pike!
While we both still think of ourselves as novices, I’m confident there is little else we could have tried and must have covered plenty of fish. So, just an off day or perhaps the curse of an easterly wind which I’ve read many times tends to put the fish off feeding?
NB: Beardy Paul did a little research when we got back and found some words of wisdom which might explain. As the weather warms up from winter, trout start to swim into the wind for food. When the wind is easterly, then they would also need to swim into the bright sunlight, which they don’t like. So, perhaps a bright sunny day with a cold easterly wind is just a bad day for fishing.
In an attempt to try and keep a record of weather conditions to see if there is any truth in the easterly wind idea I suggest we add a little note to these reviews so that we can look back over time and see if any particular conditions relate to bad days. I’m hoping something will jump out otherwise we’ll have to just blame our own lack of skill! I’ve also heard that air pressure can have an effect when fronts move in but on this day it was a pretty steady high pressure that had built up over a few days so I don’t think that would have put the fish off. There is a good website here to check past air pressure values for the UK ~ Beardy Paul
General conditions – Bright, a few clouds and quite windy.
Wind direction – North east
Air pressure – 1027
Flies that worked – None!