Defeat

Today a river kicked my arse.

I had taken the first week of the season off with the intent to fish my socks off, and fish i have.
With this in mind i set off for a bigger river today, no more small stream business. We had been speaking about fishing this water for ages but never got round to it, but today was to be the day. Off we went to the local tackle shop to buy our permits and begin our day.

On arrival at the waterside i was gobsmacked at how gorgeous the place was! I had an idea how the place would look, and i was wrong. It was a typical upland freestone river, classic brown trout territory. I rigged up my 3# and began to feel almost cocky what with my lucky streak over the last two trips. The first hour was spent working upstream with depth charge nymphs plumbing the depths of the deep, black pools....to no avail.

The one thing that was impossible to ignore was how dodgy the wading was. I thought i was well practised in fishing these upland waters but this river was scary! It was so powerful for its size, the rocks were coated in slime that no wading boot could contend with. After suffering a few too many close calls i decided it was time to rethink my tactics.

I sat and gathered my thoughts constantly thinking "this place rules" which it does. I decided that given the dark peaty tinge on the water that the fish were perhaps sitting higher in the water than i had originally thought, on with the light nymphs and spiders, off with the half bricks. I pushed further upstream, the going was pretty tough, steep,steep banks and bottomless pools aint a good mix but all was well.

What im basically trying to get at here is that i fished for just over 8 hours and couldnt get so much as a take. One thing i did learn is that these bigger waters have to be taken seriously and given a healthy amount of respect, slipping on a smallstream means a wet arse. Slipping here would have been disastrous. My next purchase will be a wading staff.

Anyhoo. The river looked amazing, im sure during lower water it would have been a whole lot more comfortable to fish, and i'll be sure to head back soon. Even blanking in a place like that is infinately more enjoyable than bagging up at some horrible rainbow water, in my opinion at least.

No fish maybe but today was still perfect :)