Just come back from a couple of weeks walking in the north of England....with a few fishing days thrown in!!
We started in Harrogate and the plan was to fish the Nidd with Phil Holding on Friday 4 Sep. Phil called to let me know it had rained pretty heavily over the past couple of days and i said i'd look at the river when we arrived on thursday evening. It wasn't good - up a good couple of feet and pushing through very hard so friday was off. We agreed to try again on Monday but it rained again on saturday and I gave it an hour on sunday afternoon when the river had dropped but was still 12-18 inches above normal and flowing strongly. I managed a small trout but spent most of the time fighting the current. I decided to get out before i fell in and phoned Phil to give him the bad news. Fortunately that was the last of the bad weather.
On the following Tuesday I had a day with john Aston on a small yorkshire river which followed a successful WTT auction bid. It rained for the first hour or so, and quite heavily at times but following John's advice to fish the duo I picked up a couple of nice trout, both on the dry, from a long steady glide. When I reached the faster water I switched (inevitably) to the heavy nymphs and fished short. I ended up with 30 including some lovely grayling well over 1lb. A really excellent day, John was a great host and provided a substantial packed lunch centred on a very good game pie!
We moved to Durham and i had half a day on the Tees (Raby estate) with Jeremy Lucas. What a river!! Fast, rocky...exciting wading. We walked up from High Force the day before and my wife took one look at the river and said that I was not going to fish that on my own! It was great though, apart from the midges. I had 4 on dries and missed another dozen or so. We would probably have had more but i had to try the heavy nymphs for the last hour which resulted in one hooked and lost.
We then moved to the Lakes and I fished the Rothay which was a mistake. Very low water, canoes coming through, no wading....gave it up afer a couple of hours.
Finally I fished the eden with Jeremey Lucas - another WTT auction day. It was a very hard day and I know that Jeremy was disappointed at the fishing. I was happy, we had 10, mostly on dries, and 3 of the grayling were 1lb+ fish (all of which took a nymph fished duo style).
Unfortunately, my memory card in the camera had developed a fault. If the man in the camera shop can sort it out I'll post some photos of the first week, in the meantiome here are some from the Eden.
Regards
Peter
Northern Rivers (OK, southern if you are in Scotland!)
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