Tracy&James | Sunday, 18 April 2021
We’re just back from another great day on the river Dee, an unusually warm and sunny day where we saw a large number of sedge flies in flight and caught lots of fish. For me all my fish today were on dries, even though I only saw a few rises. Besides the fishing, the location is great for spotting wildlife such as otters, squirrels, herons, kingfishers, pheasants and we could hear a woodpecker though couldn’t spot it. The river is very low at the moment, so wading is easier than normal, although there were still a few moments that I thought I might end up taking a dunking as the stones on the river bed were very slippy with algae. The beat we picked today had a cold wind blowing initially against the flow, which then switched 180 degrees, meaning casting could be a little tricky, so it helps that James and I can cast a #3 easily in such conditions. The tricky wind meant I needed to practice curve casts to make sure the fly was drifting ahead of the leader.
During the week we had a day casting ST27 and S55 outfits with Steve to test his prototype lines. We went to his place in a beautiful welsh valley about an hour away. The location is pretty remote and the surrounding fields were full of sheep and lambs, however in the field we were casting in, we had to contend with a colourful but dumb pheasant who didn’t even flinch when the fly line landed on its back when it repeatedly wandered into our casting area. We spent some time chopping the ST27 lines down to see what length went best with different rods. Steve’s intention is to supply the lines long so that the caster can cut them down to whatever length suits them best. I really enjoy practising with ST27 and I am consistently getting close to hitting my current target of 150ft, hopefully that will happen soon. However with the S55, I need to improve my approach so had both James and Steve providing feedback and suggesting tweaks to my technique. My drift has been too rotational and has the adverse effect of pulling the back-cast loop open, so they advised pushing back and up. We also practiced spey casting, though next time we intend to go somewhere with water as grass can hide a multitude of errors.
It is always good to practice with other casters as you can discuss techniques, compare styles and critique each other with the aim of improving. It would be nice to say we were starting our casting practice ready for either the UK or the World casting competitions, however it doesn’t look toopromising about those events this year. Hopefully I can organise some BFCC Meetings instead and we can run some competitions at those.
Being as James spoke last week about the lack of insect life in rivers with one of the main contributing factors being pollutants, someone has started a petition to the UK government in order to debate whether water companies should discharge sewage directly into the rivers. If you are in the UK, please consider signing this petition Ban Water Companies discharging raw sewage into water courses. - Petitions (parliament.uk)
Cheers,
Tracy