Tuesday 23 August 2011

T'other side..

A trip across the Peak yesterday to fish some of the "Peak Passport" scheme waters - specifically, the River Hamps at Redmorlee. This was unfamiliar territory, requiring tomtom to get me there, but we found the correct layby, tackled up and set off.

Walking down the beat to start at the bottom end we saw a couple of rises and a couple of likely looking pools, but the river was low and slow with a thick coating of a green slimy weed  on the bottom. I know there river here also contains the american signal crayfish, so I was keeping my eyes peeled to spot a foreign invader.

The weather was scorching, and I soon regretted leaving the sunscreen in the car. However, onto the fishing....

Tough doesn't start to cover it! There were plenty of 1-2 inch fry keen to have a go at my dry fly, but nothing of any size spotted for the first hour. Nothing rising, nothing moving, nothing. I was starting to doubt there were any fish in the river when a reasonable trout shot past me - disturbed by my wading. This lifted the spirits, a little anyway!

It was only when I found a deep dark corner where the river flowed under a boulder and observed a trout darting out and snatching bugs from the foam line that passed near it that I began to regain some enthusiasm.
A tricky "bow and arrow" cast under a hawthorn with a black foam beetle landed me my first river Hamps trout - an 8 inch specimen.

The river here desperately needed some more water, so after fishing up to the upper limit, we called it a day and headed back across the Peak, stopping at Bakewell on the way for a chat with Peter.


The video is worth watching right until the end..... after all, I'm trying to capture the true essence of small stream trouting ;-)



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