Tracy&James | Sunday, 19 June 2022
James and I are preparing to go to Italy this week to attend the SIM Fly Festival covering the World Fly Fishing Day in Castel Di Sangro, Province of L'Aquila, in Abruzzo, Central Italy. It’s a weekend fishing show where we have been invited to do a casting demo – covering tenkara… not really we’re doing a distance casting demo!
We spent some time today going through the casting options and outfits, sadly we have to adapt some of our usual casting outfits as we can only fit certain rods in our suitcase, so the 10footers are staying behind. We’ll promote the BFCC and provide advice on techniques for improving distance, however we’re not sure how 100 plus foot casts are going to go down in the land of mountain streams.
We’re hoping to do some river fishing there too, either on the Volturno or the Sangro. We had a great evening fishing on the Welsh Dee this week. With the heatwave happening in the UK, we were hoping for an evening rise, and we got one. James spotted some rises and covered them hooking a beautiful brown to start the evening. Then I started covering rises and had so many takes I lost count but missed every one(probably small fish slashing at the fly). A change of fly to a darker sedge pattern led to my first take that I hit, a lovely small brown. Then I caught several more browns. Spotting an area where a better sized fish was rising, I covered it and the fly floated over the spot. No rise, the fly started to skate and Istarted to strip it back, then there was a swirl and follow, and one more strip led to me playing a much bigger brown. This one took line and eventually I got him to the net. It was about 1 and a bit pounds and made my night.
Fishing on, I caught more small browns and the odd grayling, then I covered an area and had a take from a good sized grayling. It fought hard downstream and I didn’t think I would get it to the net. When I finally did I realised it was bigger than the brown and was a male with a lovely big dorsal fin. As it was June the 16th, the first day of the grayling season I was happy to take a photo of it nestling in my net. It was almost pitch black at this point, so I waded back to shore to meet James and compare notes. He’d also had an amazing number of fish; one good sized brown too, but no photo.
Whatever you are doing this week, tight lines,
Cheers
Tracy
