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 a French leader:

It’s deep and swirly, with eddies coiling this way and that. I had no idea what was happening to the flies under the surface. Then the clouds parted, a golden shaft of sunshine illuminated the landscape and a host of heavenly angels broke into song as the great god of angling finally took pity.

This was my reward for all that effort:

I shall die a happy man.