Flashing Lady

The week has been rather slow and drawn out, the television has had a good bashing and apart from the usual daily tasks we have not been very active. Pat has made a couple of pieces of jewellery and Meg has had her little legs walked off as I try to keep myself from becoming a couch potato. So the best I have is another fishing story and to those not interested I am sorry.

Last weekend we had rain and lots of it, put together with the melting snow and several burst water mains the river that runs close by rose rapidly by about 4 feet. Now that alone is no problem, but because the river colours quickly, fishing is not worth the effort, so every day when walking the dog I made an inspection to see if it was worth getting my waders on. Today the water was running much cleaner and so I decided to get the rod out. As I stepped into the water, with a three fly set up, in order to fish my preferred swim the first thing that I noticed was that the shape of the bottom had changed quite a lot, many large rocks had moved and I was very wary about where I put my feet. I moved about the river cautiously, trying all of the likely looking spots, but failing to locate any fish time and time again. After about an hour, success, my 7 foot light weight brook rod was bent well over and the usually well camouflaged "Lady of the stream" flashed silver repeatedly as it tried to shake the hook. The fish only ran for about 10ft and so it didn't take long before it was safely in my river net, I quickly removed the hook and photographed my prize before returning it to the water. The fish was caught in a deep hole at the end of a fast run on the far side of the river and is a place where I have caught on the dry fly. I am told that grayling shoal, so I fished on, in the hope of a little more sport, sadly this was the only fish of the day but never mind, for me it has been the highlight of the week.