Tracy&James | Sunday, 12 May 2024
Today should have been the first BFCC event of the year, unfortunately the cricket club was forced to cancel a week or so back due to a waterlogged pitch. As is typical with this sort of thing though, it has barely rained at all since the cancellation and the pitch is probably bone dry now, especially after today which was 25 deg C according to my car. I know a BFCC member popped in whilst passing and said the ground was ok but the grass was long – I suspect the club had to postpone the first mow of the year for fear of the tractor cutting ruts into the pristine wicket and outfield.
Tracy and I are now back into the swing of things back home after our saltwater trip. We've had a couple of days recently on the Dee, one really good one, and yesterday which wasn't so great. The first visit of the week saw the odd fish rising steadily all day and we both exclusively fished dries. I took my fish on a small caddis fly pattern – although the grannom were not about in huge numbers that day, I suspect they had been feeding on them previously so were happy to take my artificial if presented correctly (this wasn't so easy with the upstream wind mind you). Tracy picked up fish on one of our default Dee flies – a buff coloured klink which represents nothing in particular but everything in general.
Everything looked perfect for yesterday, apart from a slightly annoying upstream breeze. The weather had warmed up over the course of the week, as mentioned above, and when we arrived (at a new beat to us on a tributary of the Dee) the river was alive with fly life. Unfortunately after maybe two hours of navigating upstream, crossing the river many times to do so, we hadn't seen a single fish of any description. A quick bankside meeting ensued and we both quickly agreed to move beat back to the main river. The fly life wasn't quite so prolific back on the Dee but there was enough that normally the fish would be rising, but as on the tributary, there wasn't much happening. We did manage a few fish each, but it was hard going, not made easier by other river users swimming, kayaking, paddle boarding and messing about on inflatables.
Casting wise I'm not sure where I am at the moment – the competition that should have been today would have given me a pretty good idea of which disciplines I needed to practice most in. I haven't really set any targets for myself this year as invariably I fail to meet them. I would however like to get a good score in the accuracy – the type of score that I regularly get in practice but never manage in an official event. This year we have decided to change to a fully percentage based method for determining the overall winner on the day rather than a lowest points tally (i.e. 1 point for a win, 2 for a second etc.). It will be interesting to see how this pans out – in theory it should reward an outstanding result in an individual discipline more than the current scoring system. I suspect the place where there's the most scope for a big percentage score difference between first place and the 'also-rans' is in the accuracy - previous results suggest the top 3 could be separated easily by 25%, and that will be hard to make up in the distance events. Hence my desire to improve my accuracy scores this year.
The weather forecast for North Wales next week doesn't look great, but I'm sure I'll get out a least a few times with my #5 accuracy outfit – I just need to keep telling myself 15m is fine, no need to try and get 40.
Have a great week whatever your weather is.
James.