For weeks I had been counting down the days until opening day, I had a license, my gear was all checked and I had arranged time of work.
Opening day arrives and I go to work… Yup that’s right I go to work it was a busy time and I thought I’d go in and help out, who knows I might be able to get out in the afternoon… Wrong the day turned to crap it was freezing cold, blowing like hell and pissing down with rain so there was pretty much little point in going out.
The next day (my birthday) dawned a bit brighter, I got finished work at lunch time and headed off to have a look at my favourite section of the Shag River.
It had become overcast and gloomy and was hardly the best time of day but I figured I could at least look for some fish and check out how the river had handled the winter flood events.
Imagine my surprise when I found a hatch of mayflies going off, it wasn’t a big hatch but rather patchy and sporadic but ity was certainly enough to encourage the odd trout to rise quite freely.
So what looked rather average in the beginning turned out to be a cracker, I hooked the very first fish I cast a fly to but it did a couple of flip flops and chucked the fly, not bad though, first cast at a fish and a take.
Some walking and searching later put me in the right place to try for a good looking brown trout, I used a pheasant tail nymph and the fis never hesitated, a nice clean take and a rather long battle, the fish wasn’t overly large but it did seem to be quite fit and remarkably strong.
First fish for the 2008/09 season ~ 3 1/2 lbs
I kept looking around for a while but by now the wind was getting up and the light was failing as the cloud cover thickened.
I decided to go upstream and have a look at a couple of nice stretches and see if they were still good after the winter, I found a rising fish but was unable to make contact with it so I changed to my sinking line, attached a brown wolley bugger and fished the hole where the fish had been taking off the surface.
The next thing I had a handful of very angry trout and it tore off into the depths of the pool determined to hold there, I usually fish reasonably light tippets so I didn’t want to really lean on it so I just kept a steady pressure on and eventually. like after 10 minutes or so I managed to get him a bit nearer the surface.
It took a while but eventually I landed this fish too, not bad for a marginal day and not a bad way to spend some of your birthday.
Second fish ~ 5lbs
Filed under: Fishing, Fly Fishing, General Fishing Stuff
