First up, I had a couple of hours on the lower beat of the Seven last week. Same old story of the season, only one fish. This was on a tungsten beaded nymph: Well, no blank I suppose. Anyhow, today I repaired to the Derwent down the bottom of the field to see if anything […]
Time to put a stop to this fairly dismal run of form. The season has been pretty dire so far and there’s not much of it left to put things right. So it was up to Pickering Beck to stop the rot and pull out some decent quarry. Right, 7.5ft 3wt Burns, furled leader, short […]
Fed up with catching only miniscule fish – and barely any of those – I fancied putting a decent bend in the rod so headed up to Oxfolds Beck. As I’ve mentioned before there are some real stonkers in this little, crystal clear stream, but dreadful pollution has decimated the water. Last time I was […]
To the lower beat of the Seven at Sinnington to bag a hatful on spiders. The weather was fine – sun breaking through the cloud, a rather sticky 19C and a nice tailwind. The river looked in good enough fettle, up a few inches after the rain and a useful drop of colour: I started […]
In the spirit of adventure I thought I’d try something different today and take the 10ft 3wt rod up to the Spaunton stretch of the Seven. I’ve shied away from this before because I’d assumed the rod would be too unweildy in what is a tight stream – five or six metres wide on average […]
Up to the Duchy beat of the Pickering Beck to do the regular invert sampling followed by a session with the rod. It was baking hot: the car said 25C at 10am, and 28C by the time I packed up at 2pm. The water was tinged by a spot of colour after some recent rain, […]
Today was my birthday – thank you, very kind, 58 since you ask – so I treated myself with a trip up to the Oxfolds Beck near Pickering. As I’ve probably said before, it’s a lovely stretch of crystal-clear spring-fed water but has been ravaged by pollution in recent years. Sewage and trout farm discharges […]
Up to the Seven at Spaunton Moor with a spring in my step and a feeling in my bones that today was going to be a good ‘un. A bit chilly, with rain forecast but the river was looking fab: I put three spiders on the Burns 7.5 footer and started gently lashing the water. […]
So the idea was to hit the weir pool stretch on the Seven with the French leader outfit, pull out half a dozen or so of the better browns then head upstream with the 7.5 ft rod and a team of spider and pull out another hatful. It didn’t quite pan out that way. I […]
Time to fulfil a long-held ambition and fish the magnificent Swale up at Richmond in the Yorkshire Dales. An hour-and-a quarter up the A1 and first stop is the garage that sells the £7 day ticket. The warm weather we’ve been promised hadn’t kicked in yet, and it was only around 13C when I tackled […]