Only 11 days to go till wild fly fishing heaven. On Friday 26th June I’ll be hitting the road and driving up to Assynt to fish in a true wilderness. Bring it on!

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

Last weekend was the annual Roundhay Fly Fishers overnight trout fishing extravaganza. In previous years the club has visited fisheries such as Eyebrook, Esthwaite, Ravensthorpe, Pitsford and Rutland.

The normal plan for these weekends involves fishing somewhere outside of Yorkshire and spending a night in a decent pub somewhere near the chosen destination, or as was the case one year, spending a night in some damp static caravans that looked like someone had been killed inside them!

The venues of choice for 2009 were Ravensthorpe on Saturday and Rutland on Sunday. I’d never fished either of these Anglian Water Reservoirs before and as Rutland is viewed as the mecca of reservoir fly fishing I was looking forward to it.

I woke early on Saturday to discover it was freezing cold, windy and pissing it down, unfortunately it continued to piss it down nearly all weekend! British Summertime!

Upon arrival at Ravensthorpe we were told by the warden that the flies that were doing the damage were damsels. My local water (Beaverydyke) doesn’t really have a damsel hatch and I don’t have many of these in my fly box, as a result I had to tie on a pretty shoddy damsel imitation that I tied years ago when I was a novice.

The morning session didn’t result in any fish but it did result in a pretty thorough drenching for all concerned. We retired for lunch and the chance to get warm and learned that the rest of our party hadn’t faired much better. 8 anglers had caught 3 fish, the prospects for the afternoon looked bleak!

In the afternoon we tried a drift on the opposite side of the Reservoir and we finally got amongst some fish. My scratty damsel accounted for 5 fish to the net and a few decent takes, it seems I underestimated my tying prowess!

My Dad was fishing a klinkhammer and a suspended nymph New Zealand style and was getting almost an offer nearly every cast. He then switched to a small green muddler and a damsel and ended up with 15 fish and as many again that came off or missed the muddler. It really was top quality reservoir fly fishing, however it should be bloody good for £55 a day!

It turned out to be a really good session, the fish at Ravensthorpe are fantastic, they fight like absolute bloody stink and it takes an age to get their heads up and get them in the net.

We finished fishing at about 6:30 and retired to the pub for some fodder and a few ales. I thought bring on Rutland Water on Sunday for more of the same!

Unfortunately Sunday turned out to be an absolute stinker. We woke to a miserable dark grey morning. After we’d had a full english and convinced ourselves it wouldn’t be all that bad, it started to rain heavily, it was also properly cold and windy. We decided to go to Rutland and judge the conditions upon arrival.

When we got to Rutland it was still raining and it was still windy, the lady in the tackle shop said it was forecast to get worst as the day went on. We then saw a couple of anglers walking up from the boats, they didn’t just look wet, they looked like they had fallen in!

A quick vote decided it was a bad job, we all then splurged some cash in the pretty impressive Rutland tackle shop, had a brew in the equally impressive Lakeside Cafe and headed back oop north!

British Weather 1 Roundhay Fly Fishers 0