Local fishing enjoys plenty of success despite wind and rain

Although we have had some rain this last week, it has made little difference to our local rivers, aside from the longer ones which did see a bit of a lift. The Coquet rose a few inches but soon dropped back again.

Fishing in the Rothbury area, I had quite a few brown trout, which was super fun on light tackle. I did not have anything big, the best was just on nine inches. The trout were taking wet flies and nymphs in the top foot of water. Size fourteen Peter Ross and Silver March Brown patterns worked, and smaller olive nymphs - some with a small bead - did the trick too.

It has been windy, but it hasn’t stopped the still water anglers catching good bags of trout. Bags of up to twenty trout in a single session were recorded. One rod at Thrunton had eighteen fish using very small CDC patterns. I fished at Chatton and caught three nice fish from three different lakes, using three different buzzer patterns.

It was heartening to see school pupils from Berwick High School receiving tuition too. They practiced on the grass at first, then when they were given the correct safety equipment they tried their new skills on the water. I gather one pupil managed to get three trout to their net. It’s so important to encourage youngsters to get involved with fly fishing as it has so much to offer - there is so much to learn, it’s outside, it’s a challenge, and the environment is always interesting.