After a short casting lesson, I bade farewell to my client and headed off for some fishing. Today’s river was the clearest and lowest I’ve ever seen it. I was gutted when I finally arrived as the journey had taken an hour longer than usual due to roadworks and the sun was now at its highest, brightest and hottest.
There was almost no flow and the scummy, silty, algae ridden river looked lifeless.
 

Having picked my way across to start fishing, my misery was further compounded when a tennis ball landed 10 feet away from me and a spaniel bounded in to retrieve it. The dogs owner appeared moments later and immediately apologised but then offered helpfully, “You’re wasting your time anyway, You’ll not catch ‘owt in there, lad”.
I thanked him and headed straight down to the bottom of the beat.

 

After 20 minutes or so, I was beginning to think the old boy was right. Hold on though, was that the sound of a rise? It came from a shaded spot, hard up against the pipe that ran the bank and deep under the overhanging tree branches. There it was again. The branches were only inches above the surface. I would have to cast upstream and above the tree, mend quickly and watch the fly disappear under the canopy. A take would be signalled by a delicate splash or the ripples coming from under the branches. Fortunately, I was able to detect them both and was rewarded in the shape of a beautiful 9 inch brownie.

 

With a fish in the net in what I considered to be extremely difficult conditions, I was happy to head back knowing that the traffic would be equally horrendous going home.
However, on my way back upstream I spotted another sipper. I always tell clients that if a fish tells you he’s there AND he’s feeding, it’s rude to walk past him.

 

I reassembled 8ft rod, tied the size 22 midge pattern back on to my 11 foot leader and set about trying to get closer to the rising fish.
The fishes window would be small as it was lying in no more than 4 inches of water. I would have to land the fly almost on the fishes nose.
Perhaps it was luck or maybe I still had my ‘eye in’ from the mornings casting lesson demo but the fly landed sweetly in the right spot and a second later… it was gone.
I couldn’t hope to match the second fish so I headed straight back home.