I've fished Bewl twice this season. The first trip was a month ago and was quite hard going, partly thanks to my noisy boat partner. I managed two fish then, a rainbow and a brownie and lost another two.

One of the fish I lost was a very good fish and stripped off all my line on the first run. I made the mistake of trying to recover line on the reel when it shot back towards the boat and the hook dropped out.

I decided to go back yesterday and fish on my own. The lady in the fishing lodge said it had been hard fishing lately.

I took a fish on a cormorant after 20 minutes in Hook Straight, but lost it after a couple of minutes. After sampling various bits down to the end, I turned back and fished the other bank, mooring up around 40 feet offshore.

I soon had two fish on the cormorant and decided to try buzzers for a change.
The buzzers took two more fish and I missed quite a few takes.

I changed back to the cormorant and had another fish before it went quiet again.

Back on the buzzers I had another fish, but this time it was a roach, taken on a small orange buzzer. It actually put up a spirited fight before I slipped it back in. I can't tell you how many fish I hooked and lost or missed altogether this time.

A while later, I spotted a fish rising and cast to it with another cormorant pattern and this took straight away.

When things got quiet, I moved just 70 metres away and had a take on the first cast, but missed it. Within half an hour though I had another two fish, one on a cormorant and the other on an olive damsel. Time to pack up.

I fished a Cortland clear camo line with the cormorant and a Snowbee XS floater with the buzzers.

I varied the retrieves, but most were taken on a fast retrieve, apart from the damsel which took on a slow twitched retrieve. I did try other flies, bloodworms, cats whisker, ptn etc, but none had any interest, apart from a hares ear and the hook came out on that one.

All the fish were taken between 2 and 4 metres of the shore in deepish water and the shoal seemed to be moving up and down the Straight.

Rosemary Lane is supposed to be fishing well with large concentrations of fish too, according to the Lodge.

That is a good report , what I was wondering is , what CORMORANT you were using . I asked on FLY TYING and there was all sorts . Which one did you use
Cheers
cnvt

I don't think it mattered much which cormorant pattern. I used two different ones tied by myself. One had a gold tinsel head and the other a red tinsel head and neither was weighted. The gold one had junglecock cheeks. Both had green tinsel bodies and a flourescent green tag.