March provided us with wonderful fly fishing, lakes fished superbly with some very good over wintered browns landed as they came into the margins very quickly once light levels moved up.
Above Mark shows off his new PB brown Trout around 7lbs from Watermark Fisheries. Forgive the poor image quality, the result of using camera phones!
Numbers of you also made your first fly casts and catches with us during March, landing some cracking fish in the process of learning new skills. At Loynton fish averaged 4lbs, fighting twice their weight. The fishery looks better than I've seen it for a long time and the lodge revamp has only added to the already great facilities.
Top flies for March have remained lures as fry bashing continued. One particular morning I witnessed 2-3 inch roach leaping in huge numbers for their lives as rainbow after rainbow smashed into the shoal. An awesome sight that would do Justice to a David Attenborough nature film! On milder days, off which their have been many midge pupa and olive nymphs have been highly productive, with some good hatches of midge and even the odd pond olive too.
Early season river fishing has been typical, reasonable conditions provided better hatches than unsettled conditions, with midge and olive patterns providing the bulk of top water sport. Between this, nymph fishing has scored heavily using shrimp, caddis and beadhead PTN style flies.
Now April is here, things will only get better, with more nymph and dry fly action on both still and running water venues. It's the most exciting time of the year for light nymph and dry fly fishing during the coming 3 months as the trouts food chain explodes into life and everything builds towards the famous Mayfly hatch!
Best Fishes
Steve
