Following a recent trip to the river with Lisa Isles, last Sunday Lisa and I returned to the river Calder for more fishing! with near enough no rain since our last outing the river was still very low.

we were fishing in Copley starting by Copley village and working our way back up the river. upon our arrival I was shocked to see no other anglers out as Copley seems to be a hot spot with the fly anglers. we set our rods up, setting up with the duo, a nymph with a dry fly on the dropper. just before we started it decided to rain but only a short shower, after it passes it was time to get down to business.

First cast lisa caught the first of many, many grayling. I started to fish above lisa, casting up stream and focusing on the dry for any sudden stop or it getting pulled under. however snagging on a rock I had to set my whole leader up again! after fishing this stretch we moved down do fish a faster run of water. I fished the top whilst lisa went further down, the next 10 – 15 minutes saw us both land a grayling each.

then,

Lisa had a couple of casts into the pocket of water I was fishing when completely out of the blue her rod arched over and she was into a fish, we didn’t know what it was, a big grayling? or a big trout? Hugging the bottom of the river lisa finally managed to land the fish. A brown trout we estimated to be around the pound mark.

After a few quick pictures the fish was returned. We then waded back across the shallow river and fished a run of water just up from where we started.

Gathering tips from Lisa all day she told me how to fish the out side and in side seams of a run of water. This proved to work missing numerous fish! But we did manage a handful of grayling and another nice trout!

Happy we had covered all the pockets of this stretch we decided to take a walk up the river and have a look hat was on offer!

After a small de-tour which I won’t go into detail about (let’s just say we were up to our ankles in mud) we were finally back in the river!

We were still fishing the duo with a sedge fly and a tiny nymph which the grayling were going crazy for! It was like grayling city as Lisa called it!

In the last hour we both had a couple more fish each before it was time to call it a day.

A HUGE thank you again to Lisa for taking the time to share her knowledge of river fishing with me! Another very enjoyable afternoon!

Tight Lines