The trout season was rounded off with a trip down to
Salisbury and a visit to a couple of beats on the Avon. The first port of call
was new water to me and, to be honest, I fished it poorly. Despite signs of
feeding fish I just never got into the swing of things and fished poorly and
managed to miss the couple of rises that I was able to attract. I was fishing
with a 9’ 5 weight rather than my more usual 7’9” 3 weight and to be honest the
bigger stick did feel rather unwieldy. I fared rather better at the, more
familiar, second venue and was able to bring several fish to hand, the pick of
which was an 18” wild brown.
With the trout season now over I can also end my self
imposed limit of 5 flies. I don’t feel that I suffered at all this year in
terms of catch rate. Although I probably fished less this year than last year,
a depressingly consistent trend, at no point did I find myself cursing an
inability to select from a larger selection of flies. However I did find myself
chafing a little when sat at the vice, there were a couple of times that I
would have liked to select from a broader palette of materials. In terms of the
actual patterns I did not have occasion to use the spent pattern at all and I,
for some unknown reason I just did not fancy the shuttlecock pattern. In terms
of the remaining 3 patterns the fish were fairly evenly spread between them,
perhaps slightly favouring the CDC Emerger which indicates little other than my
own bias – it is a pattern I have always liked. I had not used the CDC Dun pattern
at all before this season and I have to say that it was a really good pattern
when naturals were on the water and certainly justified the embuggeration factor
involved in winding and varnishing stripped quills.
