Today I had an eventful trip to a small, busy Cheshire river. This club water is heavily fished by coarse anglers who throw in pints of maggots in an attempt to draw the fish to them.

The fish density is fairly low here and there is always somebody else fishing. I see the eyebrows raise when I walk past with my 8ft rod and single nymph but I am undeterred.

The perpetually muddy banks again had me on my backside which only helped cement my status as ‘village idiot’ to the guys fishing down river who appear to be surrounded by half the contents of their houses.

 

The popularity of this small beat has increased massively since I first fished it a few years back. This is probably due to the posting of several social media videos showing a couple of guys “bagging up”.

They caught mostly small fish but where there are small fish, there have to be at least two big fish. Today I was hoping to meet the parents.

 

I figured my best chance would be to avoid the obvious pegs and try to find some wadable water. It is still fairly mild and the Grayling have yet to shoal so I searched the more shallow water with my solitary bug. Two small Grayling were hooked and lost after a brief battle so I was hopeful.

Moving up river, the pace slowed and the depth increased and a likely looking run under an overhanging branch produced the best Grayling I’d has from this river. Mission accomplished, I was ready to head home. I continued to wade up river to find an easier place to get out. As I reached a bend, the river bed changed from gravel to mud and the water was getting deeper.

 

I was contemplating wading all the way back downstream again but the sound of a train made me look up. I was right next to the viaduct that I’d seen in the videos. I knew there were fish in this pool but it was unlikely that the course anglers would have been able to make the same presentations as me from their position up on the bank.

It was now very soft under foot but I could see a promising bubble lane that needed my fly through it so I prodded my way into position with my wading staff and settled in. My second cast produced a nice little Chub but a few casts later, I hooked what I would consider to be a specimen Grayling from a river of this size.

The iconic viaduct is a bit of a giveaway as to the location but as nobody reads my blog, those fish are safe!