Friday 20 February 2015

A Missing tip

Back on the River Test and the Saturday started off quite poor. I put my rod together quickly and rather than put a line through it thought i would walk up to Beat 11 with Grant. When I arrived i looked at my rod and there was only 3 sections rather than 4, Damm! A walk back and a good luck around convinced me that it was lost so i pulled out my spare rod and got on with it. The weather was great and quite mild, the water was a little coloured but that would help not to scare the fish so easily. A fish in the morning and another in the afternoon would be a good start. We wanted to get Les a few fish after a blank last time and Mick took him on the Main river first thing. A few fish later including this one and he was full of confidence. In the afternoon Phil was sure that a salmon or sea trout jumped in front of him and a minute later Les was into a fish that stormed off and snapped. It would have been brilliant if he had landed a Salmon!
Refreshed the next day and i thought i would go exploring and a good walk down beat 6 and 7 ended up with beat 3 as far as i could go. Not feeling confident i fished it down with no success and then sat on the seat to put up a new cast. After a quick natter to Shane in his car i was feeling rejuvenated. A decent duo cast fished upstream and it felt much more pleasant. As i kept up with the line coming downstream i saw the fly go under and thought it was sinking so lifted off to cast and there was my first fish of the day - thats better!
The next couple of the fish were the same and i kept thinking my fly was sinking. However confidence is an amazing thing and the next one only twitched the klink and i lifted into a fish. I was on fire now and i landed at load more after a couple of other times up the pool.
As i releaxed and thought about returning i turned on my phone and there was a surprised voicemail from Grant saying he had found my rod tip, fantastic! It's a good job he was the other end of the beats as i could have kissed him. What a great morning, very enjoyable!