Tag Archives: Brown trout

The River Loddon – Trout – 5 July 2016

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Thursday

In early July I found myself in the UK and my father (a keen fly fisherman) invited me to join him for an afternoon of trout fishing on the River Loddon at Strathfield Saye  http://www.stratfield-saye.co.uk/  – the Duke of Wellington’s country estate. The estate was gifted to Wellington in 1817 to thank him for giving Napoleon a bloody nose at the Battle of Waterloo. More recently the cavalry scenes from the film Warhorse were filmed here.

The River Lodden is actually a tributary of the Thames that runs through Berkshire and Hampshire. It rises near Basingstoke and runs through a mixture of agricultural land and urban landscape before reaching the Strathfield Saye estate. In days gone by it supported a number of mills along its course. The river is carefully managed by a River Keeper and anglers pay an annual fee to fish it on dedicated days through the trout fishing season which runs from 1st of April to the 30th September. On the estate the river is stocked with both rainbows and browns but also contains a variety of coarse fish including carp, chub, tench and roach.

On the estate the river is divided into about 6 ‘beats’, each about a half a mile long. The anglers, who pay an annual subscription for a ‘rod’ typically have access to the river one afternoon per week and rotate through the beats. On Thursday we were fishing the Duke’s beat. Each beat has a small hut to shelter anglers from the highly variable English summer weather. The rules are clear; only up stream fly fishing with dry fly or nymph is permitted with a bag limit of four trout per angler/ day. All coarse fish must be returned. My GULPS would not be welcome here!

I have not fly fished for a while but it is like riding a bike. The challenge on a tight stream like this one is to avoid losing your flys in the foliage on the back cast. We were using a four pound breaking strain fluorocarbon leader and I started with a grey wolf fly. Consistent rain over the previous few days meant the water was not very clear. It was also fairly cold with the forecast high being about 15 degrees Celsius.

My father walked me the length of the beat pointing out the key features in the riverbed. The stream meanders through the estates fields and the banks are planted with a mixture of mature weeping willows and the odd majestic oak or ash. The river is carefully tended and the banks are dug out and replanted from time to time to ensure good water flow and the right mix of vegetation. Much of it was only about 50cm deep on the day we were fishing but at various bends there are metre plus deep holes to give the fish cover.

The stream is stocked before the season starts with a mixture of juvenile brown and rainbow trout. Most of the fish are removed over winter when there would not be adequate food to support the population. Some of the bigger fish avoid being stunned and removed at the end of the season and these veterans survive year round in the river. The typical fish is between two and four pounds in weight but there are a few monster eight pounders lurking in the shadows.

I got my casting technique sorted out on a fairly open stretch of river bank. It took about 30 minutes to remember that it is all in the wrist and timing is far more important than power. As I became more confident I found a good looking patch of shade over some slow moving water under a willow and cast up into the current. After a couple of tries the fly land where I wanted it and sure enough I saw a decent swirl as a trout came after it then turned away. I cast a few more times but it was not interested.

My father caught a nice two pound rainbow trout further down the beat. I decided to swap to a slightly heavier brass headed black nymph fly with a strand of blue in it. I found another patch of shaded slow moving water and put in a few casts. I was retrieving line fairly slowly when a fish swept in form the side and the line pulled tight. My first instinct was to wind and rely on the drag but when fly fishing you actually release line through your fingers and try to let the rod deal with the lunges. The fish was nicely hooked and my father appeared to provide some expert guidance:” No towing, keep the rod tip up……”. After a short fight I had it on the bank.

I carried on moving along the beat and hooked another fish about thirty minutes later. I was too eager and hurried it towards the net only for it to pull away and snap the leader. I tied on the only other fly I had in my pocket that happened to be a brass headed pheasant tailed nymph. I think this is the fly that almost everyone starts their fly fishing career with. It is a wet fly (sinking) traditionally made from the pheasant’s tail feathers and can be heavily or lightly weighted.

By now the sun had come out and it was a beautiful summer afternoon. I found another good spot beside some reeds and started casting. It did not take long to find another fish. This time it was a good sized brown trout that slammed into the fly on about my fifth cast. I played the fish carefully and patiently. I made sure it was tired out before I put the net beneath it.

We continued fish until about 2.00 pm by which time we had four good fish and gave up for the day.

Tasmania – Bradys Lake – 29 December 2011

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Thursday

I have left the heavy swells and lumpy seas of Queensland behind and flown south. I am lucky enough to be staying at the Taraleah Lodge in the Tasmanian Highlands, where I am hoping to catch a few Trout.

I opted for a guide as I needed to know when to fish, where to fish and what to fish with. I brought the light spin rod and reel and a range of soft plastic and hard bodied lures, but I accept that in such beautiful country, fly fishing is really the method by which Trout should be caught. My father, who is is an accomplished fly fisherman, was with me and I am keenly aware that he considers prospecting with soft plastic lures rather similar to dynamite fishing.

I last picked up a fly rod when I was about twelve – and that is a very long time ago. Everyone says it’s just like riding a bike – you never forget, but today, as the trout were rising repeatedly less than 5 metres in front of me – I certainly felt like I was flailing the water with dental floss. After a bit of casting practice I remembered just how difficult it is. Trout fishing (like most fishing) is all about stealth but perfecting a fly cast is a messy business. You see a fish rise (break the surface to feed) and you lift your line out of the water to cast just ahead of it. What you intend to do is play out some line with a couple of dummy casts above the water, then drop the incredibly lightly weighted fly gently on to the surface about a metre in front of the fish. What actually happens is one of the following:

1 – Your fly catches in the undergrowth behind you, on the long grass or trees, on the first back swing.
2 – You fly hooks firmly into your ear on the second back swing.
3 – Your dummy cast skims the surface of the water with a loud splash, spooking every fish within ten metres.
4 – The line goes back nicely over your head but as you bring it forward it concertinas in front of you and the fly – lands less than a metre in front of you.

Finally, a full two minutes after the Trout has swum away you put the fly where you want it. Put simply, it’s hard and I really struggled.

Murray, our guide, took us to the Bronte system which consists of four lakes created in the 1950’s as part of the hydro-power scheme that sends power across Tasmania. He started us off on the western shore of Bradys Lake where trout can often be seen in the shallows. There was a light cool breeze ruffling the water at about 10.00 am.

Bradys Lake


There were various insects buzzing above the water, in the shallows and every now and then a small Dun would pop up on the surface. The Dun is a small winged insect and it emerges from a larva that has matured on the bottom of the lake. When it’s ready to hatch it floats up to the surface and the wings pop up like a little sail. They then blow around on the surface, drying out until they are ready to fly away. The Trout will eat them at all stages of this cycle, but they get particularly excited when there is a big hatch and the Duns are popping up all over the water. You can either target them with a fly that looks like the larval stages (nymph) and sinks – a ‘wet’ fly, or you can target them with a fly that sits on the surface – a ‘dry’ fly. If you want to cover both bases you can tie on a dry fly with a wet fly trailing underneath.

This was the set up my guide gave me. It has the added advantage of making it easier to spot a fish strike. When the dry fly (in this case a black foam bug with a red and yellow dot on its back called a ‘Chernobyl’) is pulled under, you strike. We fished for an hour at Brady’s Lake and then our guide suggested a move to the southern corner of Bronte Lagoon. This was another shallow area with weed clumps, tree stumps and fallen trees and it looked very promising. As we arrived a good size Brown Trout broke the surface to snaffle something. We started casting wherever we saw the fish rise. But my poor casting made it tricky.

A good guide saves time and can put you on to the fish

After another hour I was casting more effectively and I was able to put the fly close in to a clump of weed where a fish had been repeatedly feeding. Murray suggested I just let the fly float past – no need to strip line to move it – just let the wind push it past the weeds. I did this a couple of times and then to my surprise the Trout came to the surface and took a swipe at the Chernobyl, instead of the trailing wet fly. I jerked the rod up but I missed the fish.
We carried on until about 2.00pm but I never got any closer to catching one. It was a good introduction to how tricky this type of fishing can be.