A fishing trip up to Cumbria is always eventful. My three blog followers may remember that I was trapped at the Tufton Arms hotel in the floods of 2015 and since then, every subsequent trip has coincided with heavy rainfall, albeit thankfully not on the same scale. The net result though has been poor fishing due to excess water.

 

As I looked at the long range forecast for our 3 day fishing trip, I was concerned to see that the weather was set to be perfect…almost too perfect. We arrived to find that, in a comically cruel twist of fate, most of Cumbrias rivers had been reduced to nothing more that a trickle in the searing sunshine. That said, the river Eden is a great and varied river so I was still relatively positive of some action.

 

We stayed fairly close to home on the first day and availed ourself of the fishing that was offered by the hotel.
The town waters were likely to be plagued by paddling kids and stick retrieving dogs so we headed further downstream to the Sandford beat of the Eden.

 

As we made our way down the bank to the Small rising fish, the arid stones crunched underfoot and sent the tiny wild fish careering for cover in the crystal clear and painfully shallow runs.
 

We eventually found a pool with enough flow for us to get within casting distance of a fish and were immediately rewarded with wild brown Eden Trout. Unfortunately, these runs were few & far between and the competition for them was fierce as we met several other anglers who were themselves trudging the banks in search of fishable water.

 

A relatively short session prompted an early return to the hotel in order to rethink the plan of action for days 2 and 3.