It’s taken a few months for me to find my feet and revise my fishing techniques but I finally feel like I’ve bonded with Fordwich trout pool. I’ve sussed out the best locations, waited for the best times of the day and completely changed how I think about flies. Having fished so many waters where a buzzer or damsel would catch fish most days it’s taken some effort to really think about natural food and flies and not rely on old favourites that don’t seem to work on very small, natural lakes.
While I do love having fun on larger lakes with buzzers I’m revealing in the challenge of working out what the trout might be feeding on. Last time it was a feeding frenzy on Olives of some kind. This time there were Olives but also a lot of sedges. I’d seen sedges hatching the last time I was there a few weeks before so tied up a few variations of dry, wet and emerging patterns. Having seen fish rising and sedges being blown onto the water I tried most of the new patterns I’d tied without success.
After moving and trying a few different spots I noticed more activity down the gate end where its a bit deeper but the wind was coming at me from completely the wrong direction and the fish were on the other side where there’s only a few feet of bank before you hit a very large hedge. A few terrible casts into the wind made me stop as I didn’t want to scare them away completely so I decided to creep round to the difficult bank and try roll casting short casts into the rising fish. With a sedge dry on I tried a few casts and a fish jumped at the fly but didn’t hook up. A few more casts saw another quick take and a few fish follow and turn away and then nothing. I thought I may have scared them off a bit so moved round the other side and changed fly. Thinking about the sedges and what might trigger a reaction from the trout I thought something like a hopper might work with its dangly legs maybe triggering a similar response as the sedges antenna would so I tied on a green bodied hopper. The hopper certainly got the trouts attention and having a missed a few takes I managed to bag a lovely 3lb trout. A few more casts and out came another. I moved around the other side again and a few casts later pulled out another lovely 3lb bar of silver. It then went a bit quiet. Fish were rising less and the sun was going down. I’ve always thought this time of night was the time for the evening rise but once it gets to a certain point the fish seem to just disappear and its always earlier than I think. I figured I’d caught the rise for the hour before and that was it. Having noticed on previous trips that the fish here seem to like flies pulled quickly, instead of just letting the dry fly float down and stay static, I decided to give it a couple of really big pulls and after a few casts…BANG! Another great fish of around 3-4lb took off with my fly after a thumping take.
Four fish in around 3/4 hours in a late afternoon session after work – you can’t grumble at that. I’m definitely getting the hang of it here and putting in to practice everything I’m learning is paying off!
Next time I’ll try and take more photos to.
General conditions – Cloudy with occasional sun for the afternoon
Wind direction – South westerly
Flies that worked – Hoppers