As a first post to get the blog up and running (and set up the links), a quick round up of the freshwater fishing for 2024!
15th of March and I was straight out into some brownies in the Nant Basin. Hatches were short but sweet an hour or so before dusk, but a lot of moving about was necessary to find the fish that were coming into the shallower areas.
Clients steadily flowed in as it warmed up, and for the whole year, not one blank session! Well one... but we don't talk about that, with a fair few fish missed on the strike..
As it warmed up, I found a new love for my personal fishing, skating small caddis across the surface, with small fish leaping out after it. Far more fish missing the fly than landed, but I will be doing it again this year for sure.
Trout fishing steadily got better and better, with midge hatches lasting hours on the long summer evenings providing hours of constant sport.
Speaking of midges, this year they were hell, remember your smidge next year, I was dual wielding the tins at some points, windmilling the air whilst I tried to get my gear on before dousing myself.
Mostly, the weather was stunning all summer, the very calm evenings did mean we were going down to 7x leaders on the 2wt rods though to keep it fine and sneaky. The fish here don't seem particularly put off with a mirror calm evening though. Usually a ripple helps, but these guys were always feeding hard on the surface. as soon as the sun started going down.
I took most of the beginners to very shallow lochs, where we could use muddlers, dry flies and bushy bibios to keep the flies up in the water where takes can be seen. It makes it more fun (in my opinion) seeing the take, but also it provides a much better learning experience, allowing the fly to be static on the surface where we can talk about the last cast, what was good, what was bad, but still be actively fishing.
There was of course some disgusting weather, where I gave up on sitting in on one saturday and headed up to a loch in driving rain. with a 7wt fast sinking line I managed to find fish feeding, and managed 12 fish all over 10 inches, which is a good consistent size for the lochs here, especially in that weather!
Right at the end of the season, water levels rose and fish were stacked waiting to head up the streams to spawn for the bigger waters. This provided excellent sport briefly before seeing they were mostly egg-bound females, figured out what was happening and left them to it.
We focused more on the Pike fishing after the trout season closed, with multiple fish on the fly on several evenings. The biggest on the fly was only 12lb, but we had them up to 18lb on the bigger jerkbait lures.
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