Sunday, March 15, 2009

The Glorious 15th

50 years old and I still look forward to the 15th March like a child looking forward to Christmas, it's a feeling I don't think I'll ever lose.

We were on the water by 10.30 this morning, I'd set up to fish a single nymph on a tapered leader giving me the option for a quick change to the dry if I came across a rising fish.
Large Dark Olives were hatching sporadically by 11am and the odd fish was rising to them, a change to an Olive Comparadun produced no respone so I soon changed to my 'old faithful' the Klinkhammer and rose, and lost a fish straight away before taking my first of the new season, a nice 14 inch brownie.
The Klink scored twice more before lunch but only one came to the net and just as things were looking good for an afternoon on the dries, the sun came out and put an end to that, the hatch of olives petered out and we never saw another for the rest of the day - large darks have never been real sun lovers.

With not a rising fish in sight, the afternoon was dedicated to the upstream nymph and another five fish took a liking to it, the best, a nice but relatively thin 16 incher - I'm not complaining though, a seven fish opening day is a great start.

I won't get out next weekend but hopefully the weather will be suitable the weekend after for me to get excited about my first outing of the new season on Ullswater.

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