After more Easter chocolate than I should have eaten, it was time to get to the river and work some of it off, and I did that with a young, very enthusiastic angler called Alex Doody, who was very keen to try fly fishing. After spending the previous day coarse fishing with him, I was very excited to get him onto the river to try for a brown trout, as he reminded me a little of myself at that age. Alex asked a series of questions as we walked towards George’s wall accompanied by his dad, Mark, who also came along to fly fish with us.
After a quick run down of the overhead cast, and the procedure if a trout was caught, it was time to head into the river. The river was running a little lower, reading at .57 on the gauge, with a slight increase to 10°C water temp. We had a slight breeze and the odd light shower throughout the morning, but none of that put the two anglers down and they fished hard. I must say I was impressed with Alex and his enthusiasm to learn, he was fishing with an olive nymph on an indicator rig, fishing within 10ft of the river bank and slowly moving up towards the head of the run where Mark was fishing a wet fly down and across.
After 10-15mins Alex’s indicator shot underneath the water and he lifted into his first brown Trout, and what a joy it was to see the excitement of Alex catching that fish – his first ever brown trout! Wetting his hands and carefully removing the hook, Alex released the trout back to the river. Some more lively trout did follow for both anglers, each creating more excitement.
It was a wonderful morning and what a joy it was to see a young angler that will no doubt be back to give me some tips on fly fishing at some point, great to see the younger generation showing such enthusiasm and passion for fishing.
Go fishing…
