Since my last blog post I’ve been out a couple of times up and down the river including a trip up to the River Tees. 

Last weekend I fished the River Tees with Anne Woodcock and Lisa Isles, we were fishing a strech of the river only available to guests who are staying at Woodencroft Cottages. Throughout the morning there wasn’t much fly life hatching off however for a short spell of around 5 minutes there was a brilliant hatch of Large Dark Olives which Sent the fish bonkers! By this time Lisa had switched to the duo method which brought some well earned fish to the net. I soon switched to fishing the duo and landed my first Tees fish, albeit an out at season Grayling which was safely returned. All in all we had a great day and I’m looking forward to re-visiting the tees later on in the year.
 
   

Back to fishing the river calder, I went out one day last week after work.  Arriving to a low, crystal clear river. There were some flies hatching off but not enough to get the trout feeding off the surface. I set up with the duo, with the bouyant dry fly all ginked up and below a small size 18 jig nymph. 

I’ve been catching some resonably sized trout over the past couple of weeks, after watching my dry fly dunk under the surface I struck into what I thought was just another average Calder fish. However when it woke up I knew I just had to land this fish, it was running riot in the tail end of the pool I was fishing! I didn’t know weather it was a big grayling or a trout. It was hard on the bottom. As I gained control of the fish and slid it over the top of my net I was looking at it with disbelief. 

 
I’m sure some of you have had much, much bigger fish from rivers but my experience of playing the bigger fish in a river is little to none! So All the tips I had been given were all floating around in my head. This fish is definitely one I won’t be forgetting for a while. 

After a couple of quick pictures the fish was returned to fight another day!
  

  
After some cracking days and evenings early on this trout season. Now my attention is turned to preparation for this years Ladies international at Grafham… Bring it on! 

Tight lines!