Martyn White | Thursday, 29 December 2022
We've had some great crisp sunny weather here since Christmas, excellent sight fishing conditions all round. So Hawaiian Dave and I decided to go to the Tamagawa on Boxing Day. It's a fairly challenging river, but has a good head of big carp and has historically been pretty reliable in terms of at least getting shots.
Unfortunately, as seems to be the case in a lot of rivers here recently there are massive construction works underway which we discovered on arrival. They're moving a foot bridge 10 metres downstream of its current position... Nothing like burning up budget surplus to avoid getting cuts next year. So we moved further upstream in search of fish in calmer waters, we eventually found a back channel that had a few fish and I let Dave take the shot on the first feeder we saw. He hooked up and had a nice fish of around 10 or 11lb.. unfortunately that was the last shot of the day and after another hour and a half of fruitless searching we made the only rational decision and headed off to the pub.
On Tuesday I wasted a day waiting for a delivery that never made it, but at least I got some flies tied. Today was great, I just walked up the river near me. The light was mostly good, and there were plenty of feeding fish. The approach wasn't easy and I spooked quite a few before I got a good shot in, a drag & drop and an eat on a fire orange scruffy bug. After that I spooked a few more before getting another to eat the bug. Nothing big, but nice clean wild fish around 5lb. As the sun started dropping I switched to a pink chenille worm, a bit less in-your-face than the bug but still nice and visible and easy for the fish to pick out. The low light makes it harder to spot fish, but also makes it easier to get close to them if you get the angle right and watch your shadow. A bit of creeping about and I found the window angle and was able to start seeing getting in tight for some short presentations. The last hour and a half was great, I stuck it out longer than I usually do in winter and picked up another 6 fish in incredibly skinny water before I really couldn't see anything at all. I'm not sure if they're the last fish I'll catch for the year, but there are still a few days left so between the forced jollity and whatnot I might head to another river in search of some bigger fish and maybe finish the year with something a bit chunkier.
