Fluff Chucking Madness!

 Canal carp have taken up most of my angling time this spring, well, a trio of tench trips have possibly taken up the rest, so any time targeting trout has had the kibosh put on it. Why after all this time that I finally decided to dust off my 4wt was because the preceding evening I took my daughter for a walk along the river to just see if the river was in good condition and generally just to do my bit to let out-of-season anglers know they are not supposed to be fishing.

 With the sun out and a pleasant evening and armed with the DSLR I hoped I'd get some photo opportunities and how glad I was that I did. I was treated possibly the best taking of flies ever in my life, the Trout didn't care about me and I snapped a good few pics off. This show of fish got me thinking. The next evening after work I shot off home briefly and grabbed that 4wt and a couple of boxes of flies, it was game on!.

Just a couple of about twenty keepers!

 Not wasting anytime I drove up to where I saw this healthy group of trout. Now I know there are few through this river but stocks seem to proliferate in the upper reaches and I only needed three casts at my first sighting and a stunning cock-brownie around a pound was in the bag "so to speak", only catch and release in my mind.

Strike One!

 The "Daddy Long Legs" falling victim to this awesome looking fish and it didn't take long for this deadly fly to claim another spotty!

Strike Two!

 Then, after a lull of possibly twenty minutes where I had to go looking for more fish as those in that pod became very spooky and its not hard to see why!

 When the stream is just over a rod lengths wide! But what an awesome place it is and that wasn't all either as I crossed paths with a big trout, so big I didn't know what do in terms if I got the chance to tempt it! Surely any inclining that it was in trouble would have me going berserk, now, that fish after a few casts did come up and stare at my fly, a take looked likely and on the very next cast I got the line just to sit straight and the fly was slurped off the top by a large cock-brownie, in water nearly as deep as it was is mind blowing and my fly rod started to piss line as it screamed off. Just ten seconds into the fight all of a sudden my line went completely slack and he was gone.

 On closer inspection as I retrieved the tippet the fish had cut the line above the fly! I was gutted and rightly so, that would have been an incredible fish from this diminutive stream.

 With my heart rate still through the roof and my Polaroids still steamed up I got off the bank and gathered myself to go again. Even after just ten seconds any other fish there would be long gone in the crystal clear water. I pushed on up above a small weir roughly 30 yards upstream where I hoped the commotion wouldn't have put the trout off feeding. Having chilled out for a few minutes I got the fly rod back out and retied another DLL size 10 on and began to stalk the water again.

 Tight against the far bank margins I could see a shape of a fairly large trout, just under the overhanging ivy, having only tasted defeat so soon I only decided to flick a fly out and allow it to drift when I felt confident that he or she had come away from the foliage for me to stand a chance at being successful, five minutes later and my pain was replaced with elation as my little trout pan was filled with a monster male!

 That will quench my fluff chucking thirst for another year! What an evening it was.