Just fished a small stocked still water today. Very enjoyable but completed my ticket with 4 to take and 4 catch and release (all 2 -3 lb stock fish) without getting a sniff of the bigger fish that are meant to be in the lake.

Started with a hot head damsel nymph and then a waggler fry imitation fished fairly deep.

Any suggestions to get past the recent stock fish and tempt the bigger ones?

Blot

heard that one before.

by any chance was there a "big one" caught the day before you fished the water.

seems to be the story i get at every fishery i visit for the first time.

bob

Unless you can see the bigger fish,you will always be fishing blind,and have to take whatever takes your fly.Sometimes dryfly pulls up better fish.
one other thing.If you do want to catch big fish,then you have to go regularly to waters that stock big fish.
Sorry to dissapoint you but that's the facts of the matter.

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The Fishermans Friend is the Flirty Fly,Fickle Food for Fleeting Fish.

Unless you can actually see/target and stalk a big fish they are pretty difficult to catch from most waters so its mostly chuck and hope.Try changing your flies often and not use patterns that most trout see day in day out.
If you want a really good chance of catching a true whopper get yourself of to somewhere like Dever Springs in Hampshire,the trout swimming around in those lakes make your eyes pop out

Neil

Firstly the big fish are not necessarily not recent stockies. In small put and take fisheries a lot of the fish are caught within days of being stocked including the big ones and few last long enough to get onto natural food or put any weight on.

Having said that you can target the bigger fish provided that you can see them, in lakes with coloured water it is almost chuck it and chance it. It's a lottery and it takes no more skill to hook a large fish than a small fish.

If you can see the fish look for a larger than average fish that is cruising at a steady speed and with its mouth opening and shutting indicating that it is a) settled and b) feeding. A good place to look is in the places where casting is difficult or that are very weedy as many anglers are lazy and will walk past to an easier place leaving fish in the more difficult places less disturbed and thus more likely to be cooperative. In deep water it is very easy to under estimate the size of a fish but big fish move in a more measured, almost leisurely way, you know when you see a great white shark on TV even with nothing to scale it against - big trout are the same, they just have a way of moving that tells you they are big.

Check your drag and make sure that there are no trapped loops or line around your feet as a big fish may take off in a hurry and will not be easy to stop.

Watch the fish and it will usually have a fairly well defined beat which means that if you see it in one place it is going to come back there again.

Choose a spot where the bottom is clear and drop a nymph like a PTN or GRHE so that is falls onto the bottom. Wait until you see the fish approaching and when it is about a metre away just lift the fly off the bottom and watch the fish. If it darts forward, changes course, and opens and closes its mouth - strike - as it probably took your fly. Don't wait for a pull as it may never come.

If you do find a big fish that has been in for a while in 90% of cases you are going to have to use a natural fly and forget a lure, it didn't survive and grow by eating lures!!

If the fish is a big one hooking it might be the easiest part of the job, you now have to land it and you need to apply as much pressure as the gear will take or you are going to be there all day. Don't make the mistake of trying to net it too early, don't try and net it until the fish has rolled onto its side.

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“There is no more lovely country than Monmouthshire in early spring. Nowhere do the larks sing quite so passionately, as if somehow inspired by the Welsh themselves. There is a blackbird on every thorn and a cock chaffinch, a twink as they call him there, on every bush...... It moved me profoundly. I had been spared to see another spring, and I thank God for it.”

Oliver Kite
“A Spring Day on the Usk”
A Fisherman’s Diary

Ask the "rook" hes a jammy git!

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Silversedge
LETS TACKLE CANCER SUPPORTER
"MON THE HILL CLIMBERS!!"

Try one of these



for wild waters

or maybe some of these



for stocked waters

and you may get one of these

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Tight Lines. :)

Spot on. and prepare to be dissapointed as there is a chance you will get a scrap akin dragging in a large clump o weed

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i was walking far from home, where the names are not burned along the wall, saw a building, high as heaven, but the door was so small

Forgive my ignorance but what do you call those things holding the files?

Cheers

Fazzer

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If you're too busy to fish then you're too busy.

Fly clips + wooden base , talk to Scratch

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Your fish ----> ><((((º> My fish ----> ><(((((((((º>
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Cheers Danny

Co-Founder of S.S.F.D 2010