Bit of a weird old day really. My first outing of the new season – it’s been so cold until now that I decided discretion is the better part of valour etc and didn’t fancy standing around in an icy river freezing my nads off. I’d almost forgotten what to do. I got a mile […]
Category: Pickering Beck
Up to Pickering Beck’s Duchy beat to do the invertebrate sampling then have a quick fish. For anyone interested in this kind of thing the count from the three-minute kick sample was as follows: gammarus,160; hepta, 10; cased caddis, 50; caseless caddis, 0; stonefly, 40; baetis, 40; mayfly, 6; bwo, 6. The water was high […]
Had a few hours on the Pickering Beck yesterday, starting off with French Leader and ending up with emerger. The emerger produced nothing. The two beaded nymphs I had on were these: Had a bit of success in this pool: the water towards the top of the pic is a deepish pool where a number […]
What a dismal July day. Drizzle, easterly wind and the temperature hovering around 13C. Crap. Anyhow, plan A was to have a go on the very top beat of the Seven at Spaunton Moor. But when I got there at 10.30am the water was running like a steam train and the colour of hot chocolate […]
Where the hell did the summer go? As I motored up to Pickering the gauge on the car said it was 9C! Oh well, you take what you’re given I suppose. Anyway, first stop was to do the invert sampling on the Duchy stretch – aborted last time because a herd of cattle, including a […]
Fed up with failing on the fly I slunk up to Pickering with half a pint of maggots and a trotting rod. A splendid winter’s afternoon with a watery sun and most of the frost burned off. The river looked in nice nick: I tooled around for an hour without a touch. While I was […]
After eight or nine outings in search of a grayling this winter – probably a total of what, 20 hours’ fishing? 25 maybe? – it happened. I was about to pack up after yet another fruitless session on Pickering Beck when I decided to have a cast into this pool with two weighted nymphs on […]
What with the rivers being in flood over the past few weeks and multiple domestic commitments I haven’t managed to get to any water until today. So brimful of pathetic optimism I made my way up to Pickering Beck to have a bash at the grayling. I tackled up the nymphing outfit – 10ft 3wt […]
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 […]
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, […]