On The Burn: The opportunist

How to spend your lunch-break...?

It's widely recognised that wild trout are opportunist feeders. Where food is plentiful (and water quality good, the two are intrinsically linked), they flourish in numbers, so increasing competitive pressure for food resources. Where food is scarce, numbers are more limited. In either case, trout exhibit an opportunist approach to feeding - a basic survival mechanism. Fly fishing for trout is all the more productive for this fishy instinct, more so on lightly fished waters.

I spend significantly more time thinking and dreaming about fishing, reading about fishing and tying flies than actually fishing. That's life. Maybe once or twice in a season, I will spend a whole day on the water; setting off at sunrise and walking, fishing, lunching and absorbing the landscape all day, returning home at dusk to relax with a large, often very large malt.

The norm is to catch a couple of hours here and there, maybe 3 or 4 on a good day. In order to max out my time on the water, I too have become an opportunist. Last Thursday, it was a very warm, late Spring morning as I worked at the home office, getting on with business. It has been a couple of weeks since the last heavy rainfall, local waters are ideal, a little low and clear. It was easy to become distracted, imagining medium olives, swarms of gnats and the odd hawthorn fly bringing fish up.

I'd been working since before 08:00, eating fruit and some nuts as I went and could skip lunch, go fishing for an hour (or so) and fill-up on more fruit mid-afternoon. This was highly measured opportunism, it was one of those days when you know the fishing will be memorable, if short-lived. It became impossible to concentrate on business...

There is amazing, lightly fished water within a couple of miles of home. On arrival, I sat below the bridge pictured to tackle-up. All around, upstream and downstream were trout rising, sipping at the occasional medium olive and vast swarms of gnats. At times there were multiple rises at once, the entire surface of water disturbed by feeding trout.

The road sign has been submerged since last Christmas, during roadworks in the village. I think it lasted about two nights before being tossed in the river. There are also wheelbarrows, shopping trolleys (predictably...), cable drums and a few bike frames.

I've often considered clearing the river of this debris, maybe even getting some of the local kids engaged in caring for the river. Age has made me cynical, any demonstration of care for the river would likely increase it's abuse, so I keep a low profile and only fish when the kids are at school or zoned out on PS2 at home in the evening. And so I never fish the river on a Friday night, when the adjacent park fills up with teenagers and cheap lager.

The fishing was simply fantastic. In such still conditions, it was possible to place the DT2F line with pin-point accuracy over individual fish, just upstream of the rise and watch as the fly was snatched from the surface.

Sure, I missed a few, always do but fish after fish was brought to hand, most unhooked in the water and released within seconds. I even stopped fishing for some 10-15 minutes and observed as the water around me filled with trout, ranging from 4" to, I estimate nearly 14". Standing motionless, they would swim between my legs, oblivious to my living presence. As I moved to fish one last run, the water exploded in to chaos, trout darting in all directions.

The last 20 minutes was thrilling fishing. Dropping a fly in to the head of the central run pictured above, produced a strike to every second cast, resulting in 6 fish, each one 10 - 12". They must have been lined up in numbers, picking off insect life as the current hustled through the submerged gravel channel. Keeping the rod low and applying side pressure swiftly drew hooked fish away from the feeding shoal and kept the strikes coming.