The day after I got back from Spain, I also had my first session of the year flyfishing for Carp. Although we came close to catching them on fly gear, unfortunately most of the fish were too far out to be able to reach with a fly rod. I did manage to hook one on the fly but it slipped the hook as I was about to net it. Luckily, we had a backup plan and took one of my Dad's old KM carp rods. The fish were a bit finicky, but in the end my Dad managed to land 3 and lost one of around 30lbs - which was a bit of a gutter! I managed to catch one - all the fish we caught were good doubles though.
About three weeks ago I wrote an article that was published in the Angling Times about a great spell my Dad and I had flyfishing for Carp last year, which I've pasted below:
A week or so later we decided to flyfish for the Zander on Grafham. The weather looked great - nice and calm for a change and no rain - so we were really looking forward to it. About 20 minutes in to our journey to Grafham we were cut up by a van on a roundabout which resulted in a bad crash. We couldn't believe it - it happened so fast and left us very shook up. After all the swapping of the details with the driver and trying to calm down, we continued our journey to Grafham, determined not to let it spoil our day.
It was hard trying not to think about the state of the car, but we fished on, and caught 13 Zander to 9lb 1oz, plus a near double-figure Bream my Dad caught.
We saw quite a few trout rising whilst fishing for Zander which was a bit of a distraction! But you can't do it all...
I can't believe we're already 2 weeks in to the new river season - it's really caught us by surprise and because we've had so much going on, it's been hard to get out, which has been very frustrating! We did manage a session the day after June 16th and decided to take our jigging rods exploring some of our local rivers, hoping to catch a few Chub. My first fish of the season though was a Perch of around 1lb I caught on a crankbait. My Dad then frustratingly lost a very good Chub on a jig!
The rivers were still coloured after all the rain, but chopping and changing between jigs and plugs, we ended up having an action-packed trip. I love this type of fishing - exploring miles of riverbank that hasn't been touched for months.
By the end of the day, although we were completely cream crackered, we had banked over 40 fish between us - a mixture of Chub, Pike, and Perch. The biggest surprise though was catching a lovely Perch from a tiny river, which weighed 3lb 6oz!
The best Chub was just over 4lbs - these fight really well on a 7ft lure rod!
Apart from that trip we've only managed to have a couple of hours here and there locally, which haven't been as productive as that first day. We've still caught quite a few Pike and Perch though, as well as 2 Chub around the 4lb mark - plus a couple of Dace, believe it or not, caught on tiny Crickhopper plugs fished across the surface!
That could be it now for a couple of weeks on the rivers for us, as we've got a fishing trip to France planned with a group of friends - that's if we get our car back from being repaired!
