Lovely company and dragon boats, but frustrating fishing at Bewl Water.

My internet access at home is down and I am trying to post this from the local library pc. They have just up dated their systems and now I can add pictures.

Tony Hern of Fishability and Ian Thomas of Telereal Trillium



Last Saturday I had an interesting but frustrating day at Bewl Water.  I was supporting a “Fishability” event organised by Tony Hern, the Fishery Manager from Albury Estates (a splendid fellow).  Fishability is an organisation that supports people from the military services who have suffered trauma resulting in mental or physical challenges.  Tony had a dozen or so military or ex-military folk sharing boats with an equal number of experienced guides. 

I drew the long straw having Martha, a charming military nurse, assigned to my boat.  (This was a far more attractive proposition than sharing the boat with some tough and rugged squaddie!) 

 

Having had a bacon bap for breakfast we loaded up the boat and set off, conditions looked perfect, overcast, reasonable breeze rippling the water the temperature of which had dropped to 17 C.  However, Rob Dixon, one of the Bewl staff had warned me that the fishing would be hard.  Apparently, there was a tremendous amount of aquatic insect life in the water and the fish were stuffing themselves with naturals and avoiding anything suspicious!   This was confirmed by the number of house martins working the water.  Rob recommended drifting between the cages and the dam, so that’s what we did.  The good news was that, in spite of it only being her second go at fly fishing, Martha, who was bursting with enthusiasm, could cast quite well, certainly well enough to cover fish on the drift.

Well Martha maintained her enthusiasm and we fished our socks off and all to no avail.  At one point Martha spotted a pike on the top of the water right in front of her, when she moved her rod it spotted her and did an impressive “crash dive”.  We saw fish but in spite of changing flies, lines, locations and speed of retrieve we didn’t even get a touch.  The trout definitely had other things to distract them.

 

However, entertainment was provided by the dragon boat races down by the dam.  We must have heard the Hawaii Five O theme tune five hundred times!  Lunch was excellent, and the whole event was kindly financed by Telereal Trillium, with Ian Thomas signing the cheque and him and Richard Becksmith both from TT also acting as fishing guides.

 

Desperate to provide some excitement for Martha I asked her if she would like to drive the boat.  Well she jumped at the chance and we did a grand tour of the lake at full speed.  She even brought us into the jetty with finesse!   I was sad I had failed to deliver the goods, and get Martha hooked up with bar of pink or blue silver, but she did not complain once.  She has a bright future as a fly fisher.

Rattlesnake Lake, WA, USA: Deep Water Fly Fishing Techniques!

Mark with his truck and "pram"

 

I met a real gent yesterday and he very kindly gave me a “master class” on how to fish the bottom of a deep lake with Buzzers (Chironomidae) using a fly rod.  Mark had responded to my request for guidance on the Washington Fly Fishing Forum and he proved to be a star.  He gave me some buzzer patterns, loaned me a reel with a fast sinking line and gave me one of his special homemade plummet weights.  Now recently Mark had been fishing Rattlesnake Lake regularly and his special method had been delivering the goods big time, which was why he suggested we fished there.

Mark concentrating on catching!

Mark was fishing from his fully equipped 8 foot “pram” and I was in my less fully equipped float tube.  Mark and his pal had developed this particular fishing approach because a bit of arthritis had cramped their casting style and they still wanted to fly fish.  The method was to use a team of two buzzers with a small shot crimped to the leader just above the flies and measure the depth exactly by attaching the plummet to the bottom fly.  Mark had put depth markers on the main line using white nail varnish (his wife’s I hasten to add).  The first thing that rapidly became apparent to me was that you need to be anchored to work this method and keep the flies right down.  Having tried holding position with my fins and failed as it was quite breezy Mark came to the rescue producing a 5lb dumbbell from the bottom of his pram (I said it was “fully equipped”) and I attached that to 45 feet of nylon cord I had brought with me and I used that successfully as an anchor!

Mark gently sucked the stomach contents out of one fish and showed me what they were feeding on.  Buzzers!

Anyway to cut a long story short Mark managed 5 fish and I caught zero.  So how do I explain that?

Well here goes:-

·         Mark had a fish finder

·         Mark’s anchor was a bit longer than mine so he could fish deeper

·         I was using a 6 weight rod and Mark was using a 3 weight set up so his rig was more sensitive than mine

·         Mark really concentrated hard on detecting fishy activity whereas I was distracted by the joy of just being there

·         Mark is well practiced at this method

Mark was disappointed with his 5 as he normally catches shed loads!  Although I was clearly outfished I was delighted with the day for the following reasons:-

1.       I had met a really nice guy

2.       I had been fishing

3.       I had learnt a new technique to try on the deep reservoirs in the UK in the summer when the water warms up and the fish go deep.

4.       I didn’t sink and have to swim and I learnt that I can anchor a float tube and fish provided I have a dumbbell with me.

 

 

And when it was time to go and I got cramp in my right leg (and could only paddle round in circles) Mark came to the rescue and towed me back to the launch ramp!  A real star!

 

Some of the buzzers in the plastic container were still alive, have a look at this short video clip.

 

 

 

 

Now to get on with stripping “popcorn” off of 300 square feet of ceiling!

Fly Fishing Bewl and the Benefits of Fly Fishing Forums

Robert Sorenson visitor from Utah on the water at Bewl

Following my challenging last session at Bewl and because I had a visitor from the USA coming to fish with me I thought I would access the expertese in the club via the club web site Forum. So here are the posts:-

My question: Challenging Boat Fishing caused by bright sun?
I took a pal out on Monday 27th May (Bank Holiday), it was bright and sunny and the fishing was really hard. We fished for 10 hours! For a full account and a map showing where we fished have a look at my post at http://breakingrods.blogspot.co.uk
I would be very interested in receiving any tips on how to cope with bright sun and clear water please? I am taking another pal (from the USA) tomorrow and I would like him to have a fishey experience. Regards Alan C

Donkey replied
Bright sun clear water? Use finer, longer leader, smaller flies. Drift don't anchor and fish slower than normal on any flies (blobs or buzzers) Even in the sun fish in the top 4ft. The clear water means fish can see anything above them and will come up for your fly. Trout don't look downwards, so the chances are they never saw half of of your fishing. The fish may well be deeper but fishing at depth is bad advice. Eeeeeooor!

Roadrunner 1000 replied
The problem you had on BH Monday was bright sun AND a strong wind. Never good at Bewl. Coupled with the fact that the wind had blown from a different direction for the previous few days didn't help either.

Donkey responded
Roadrunner is right about wind and sun at Bewl generally, but not this year. So prolific are the buzzers at the moment, the fish are stuffed with them off the wind feeding quietly on the high flooded grass. Sunday's rod average was 5.5, mostly on buzzers. Monday we brought 11 fish to the boat on the drift and a couple of other club members did better. Method in our boat was slow sink tip with two size 14 green Buzzers and a Small FAB Blob on the point, fished slowly. This was also the method used by the Scots team to take Gold medal in the Home International at Bewl two weeks ago. Advice, fish at the top known spots that are off the wind if it is strong and follow what I said in my previous commentr. Bewl is different this year, it is a new experience !! Eeeeoooor!

I replied
Donkey and Roadrunner, You are both stars, thank you very much. I will follow advice and try harder! Alan C

Pigsypete joined in
Can I ask what's a FAB Blob ? I also hear a washing line is a top method but I have no idea how this is fished, I looked it up on tinternet it showed the set up but not how it is fished.

Roadrunner 1000 responded
FAB = Foam Arsed Blob.
I've never used one myself as I've heard that the foam can bump the fish off. I'm a big fan of a standard orange blob as an attractor fly on the top dropper though.
I'll fish a washing line using an intermediate line, mixing up my retrieve and size of booby eyes. I can't recall when the washing line 'technique' become well known but back in the early (?) 1990's when Airflo brought out their first 'Clear Glass' intermediate range I used a similar set up. Early season I would fish a booby/fast sinker/short leader and if I felt that the fish had moved up in the water I used the Fast Clear Glass with a six foot leader, booby on point and a Black Pennell on a dropper. The technique usually produced a few fish.
I remember when the booby first became 'known' and reading of anglers using a fast sinking line, long leader, booby on the point, buzzers on droppers and using long slow pulls to make the buzzers rise and fall through the water.
There is rarely anything 'new' in flyfishing, it's usually an 'evolution' of a technique/method.

End of posts

Meanwhile I had looked up FAB flies on the net and found a YouTube demo and tied four.  See
www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNuu8VratPc

 

My American fishing buddy (a friend of a friend) Robert Sorenson, and I duely fished FABs with buzzers on Friday 31st May at Bewl and we both caught on them.  Robert caught his first blue on one.  The fish ignored our buzzers, maybe they were too big.  We found the fishing hard again after a calm start the wind got up and favoured drifts got a bit bumpy.  I did manage to hook one fish in the bumpy stuff.  A particularly favoured corner got one chap at least a dozen fish.  We saw him catch 2 beautiful browns.

If anyone knows him please direct him to this post as I said I would send him the picture and then failed to get his details.

Around 6pm when the wind had dropped we saw some fish moving in a tiny bay in front of Hook House.  Robert targetted a fish and the video shows the action (have your sound on).

Robert mainly fishes from a float tube in the States so he was interested in our drift technique in the boat using the drogue (underwater parachute) to control the drift.  He is thinking about the possibility of developing a float tube drogue!  I am off to the Seattle area on the 6th June for 6 weeks of fishing, float tubing, babysitting and working down my daughter in laws project list!  I will try to keep you posted!  One of the first things I will do out there is visit the Washington Fly Fishing Forum!

The difference in colour beween a rainbow (top) and a blue.