After a hard day not catching fish and getting a numb backside at Ladybower on Saturday, I decided to spend Sunday afternoon at Beaverdyke Reservoir in the hope of restoring my fishing confidence.

When I got up to the reservoir the wind was blowing from right to left and onto the dam wall, I decided to fish Goose Bay on the far side of the reservoir to try and get a bit of shelter from the wind. Whilst walking round the reservoir I bumped into Steve Rhodes of goflyfishinguk.com who was giving some fly fishing lessons to a couple of novice anglers. His clients were fishing for the first time and were mainly learning the fine art of casting a fly line, however they’d still managed to catch a fish so I was optimistic about my own chances!

After having the obligatory cig and a chat with Steve I walked up to Goose Bay. Before I start fishing I always sit and watch the water for a few minutes, usually having another rollup and a cup of tea! This period of observation paid off as I saw a fish head and tail on a mayfly and this decided my tactics for me. I tied on a detached body mayfly and had a fish on my first cast, result!

I managed to catch another couple of fish before it all switched off. I then had a few casts for the Brown Trout on John O Gaunts Reservoir but I couldn’t tempt them. Nevertheless it was a good afternoon and it felt good to get my string pulled after a blank day at Ladybower.

I didn’t have a landing net with me so I didn’t get a picture of the fish but below is a picture of the dam at Beaverdyke as seen from Goose Bay.

This weekend myself and Bob paid a visit to Ladybower Reservoir. It’s not actually in Yorkshire but it’s just on the edge so we thought it was about time we fished the place and got it up on the main site.

Ladybower Reservoir

After taking the wrong junction off the M1 we spent about an hour trying to get out of Sheffield, it’s time to invest in a sat nav!

When we finally arrived at Ladybower we parked up and went to the office to get a boat sorted. After parting with just shy of £35 for an afternoon ticket it struck me that the fishery manager was, to put it bluntly, a miserable bastard!

He was obviously not one for conversation, any attempt at it by myself was met with blank stares and grunts. When you’ve got a job most anglers would kill for why not show a bit of enthusiasm!

I’m sure he gets sick to death of anglers asking the same old questions but as a paying customer I feel a bit of helpful advice is part and parcel of paying to fish a large commercial water. Who knows, maybe he was just having an off day? Rant Over!

A full write up on Ladybower will be added to the main site in due course, in the meantime check out these pictures, it really is a lovely place to spend an afternoon.

Ladybower Reservoir

Ladybower Reservoir

Wonders will never cease! I’ve finally uploaded some new content to the main site, this long awaited update is a review of Crabtree Angling Lake near Richmond, North Yorkshire.

Read the review

Crabtree Angling Lake

First outing of the year for the Roundhay Fly Fishers! Bearing in mind the windy conditions, I’d call it a success. Everyone caught fish, and as is always the case at Wykeham, they were good fish at that! Yours truly had 6 to the net, mainly on buzzers but the brownie pictured belowe came to a damsel on an intermediate. As you can see, I’d just dismounted from a horse before having the picture taken.

Special needs...

However, about 10 minutes later Fishfinder-General,  John North, hooked and landed the biggest brownie any of us have ever seen. Because of its size, and the energy it had clearly expended during the fight, it wasn’t lifted out of the net for the classic money shot photo but hopefully you can still get an idea of it’s size from the pictures below.

Look at the size of that thing!

Andy, clearly disgusted at the sight of John's shocking pink egg fly in the fish's jaws

It weighed in at 8lb once we’d deducted weight of net. A cracking brownie by anyone’s standards.

Fellow members of Yorkshire Anglers….just a few pics to whet your appetite for the new season!

Old news really, but just in case anyone decides to go, Lindholme Lake ceased to be a fishery some time ago. I’m putting this up on the blog until we get the entry deleted off the main site.

(Thanks Fred)

Here are a few pics from a visit we had to Leighton Reservoir at the back end of this season. Bob has written an article about Leighton which is now up on the main site, you can read it here.

Looking for quality fly fishing near Leeds and Harrogate? Yorkshire Anglers have memberships available for the coming season. Members have access to two reservoirs and a stretch of the River Wharfe near Otley.

The two reservoirs are situated in a truly beautiful location, 8 miles from Harrogate, 15 miles from Leeds. The banks are accessible only by anglers and this makes for an intimate private fishery!

For more details about membership opportunities contact Phil Bamforth on 0113 2817137.

For more images of the reservoirs have a look at the following pages on our main site:

Beaverdyke Reservoir

John O Gaunts Reservoir

We recently had a day’s guided fishing at Malham Tarn with Steve Rhodes from goflyfishinguk.com.

You can read Bob’s article on Malham Tarn on our main site here.

Here are a few pictures of what was an excellent days fishing: