So I headed out for a few hours – it was a reasonable evening and despite the fact that a couple of buddies had been out on the Saturday with no results I was quietly optimistic. For one, there had been a little rain that seemed to have freshened things up and cooled the water down and secondly I forgot my net which is a sure sign of an incoming lunker.
However , McGregor telephoned me and we ran through my possible excuses for the evening – he was on the way to a Sea Trout session.
I stomped up and down the river for a bit not even seeing a rising fish until I plonked myself at a pool at around 10pm.
I waited until the light was coming off and couldn’t stand it, I worked my way up the pool with a nymph without a take. As it darkened there was still no action so I stuck on a streamer and worked my way down the pool. A trout moved and I covered it, the trout took it and gave a good pull and then was gone. I worked down the pool again and another trout took like the first time.
I now noticed that there was a few splashes around me – I snipped off the streamer and tried to tie on a dry. It took a while, mainly because I realised after a few minutes peering in the dark that that the last time I had used this fly I had not removed the tippet material from the eye of the hook. It seemed to get darker and the splashes more insistent. I finally got the fly tied on – it was proper dark by this point and I looked around for the trout. The splashes had stopped.
The evening rise had last around 20 minutes – roughly the time it took me to figure out how to tie my fly on in the dark.
I got home around 1.30am and went straight to bed – up at 0630 for work like a burst ball!
See you next week for more trouting!
That nicely summarises why I don’t really like fishing the evening rise.
Nothing rising until you can’t see to function properly and then it all stops and you drive home in the dark.
That’s why I usually switch from daytime trout fishing to other species around this time of year.