After rain all morning on the only day that week I could escape to the trout pool I wasn’t very hopeful. But come lunch time the rain had gone and the sun had come out, the wind was still westerly and a little bit strong but shouldn’t case any problems. It wasn’t Rutland strength by any stretch so pretty easy compared to that day!
I’d got rid of my big heavy 3 dropper leader setup from our Eyebrook and Rutland trip and went back to my single fly with as light a tippet as could get away with. I’d tied up some small scruffy natural looking buzzers in the hope that light, small and natural would tempt these resident trout.
I picked a spot on the windward bank and started fan casting by small buzzers. Nothing. But there were fish coming up for something, I even saw one fly up from the depths, take something from just under the surface and dive back down again with barely a wisp of the dorsal fin breaking the surface. If I hadn’t of seen the fish there would have been no sign of him on the top of the water to give him away. Over the other side I could see a lot of fish activity on the top so I decided to swap over flies to an olive shipmans which seems to be my go to fly at the moment if there’s top of the water action. A few casts later and a nice alb trout grabbed on. I’ve noticed with the shipmans that it seems to fish better retrieved with a bit of speed once its got wet and started sinking a little.
Being a very small lake I tend to move after catching 1 or 2 fish so seeing activity over the other side still I took a walk over. It was still wet from the mornings rain but quite warm and humid with the sun out and over this side in the shade there were lake olives everywhere. At a guess I figured the fish might be taking the flies landing on the water so I swapped to a wet olive pattern. What came next was a frantic hour or two of missed takes, lots of splashes, a few nicely caught fish with lovely takes off the top of the water and then it went dead. While the fish were feeding on the olives I noticed they seemed to be taking the fly of the top but each time I pulled into the fish or struck the hook wasn’t in the mouth. What I think they were doing was drowning the the fly somehow by splashing next to it then coming back and taking the fly under the water. Frustrating but lots of fun and nice to see trout feeding on naturals like that. I think this place is going to be hard but fun to fish and not the kind of place you can stick a big fat bright orange buzzer on and expect to catch fish. Its making me think hard and revise my techniques.
General conditions – Rain all morning then cloudy with occasional sun for the afternoon.
Wind direction – Westerly
Air pressure – 1006
Flies that worked – Pond olive (wets), olive shipmans.