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So, last week (Thursday 19th April 2018) I decided at the last minute to drive down to Barm Elms to get some fly fishing into my very busy week. It was forecast to be the hottest day in April for 70 years and it did not disappoint, with a high of 26 and almost no wind. On very hot days like this, you do not expect the fishing to be good, but you can enjoy a day at the waterside and have a chance of enticing the uninterested trout to take your fly.

I started the day with a floating line and a small green damsel with a gold head, and after about 35 minutes I took a 3lb rainbow but that was the only action I had for a further 2 hours and even after changing fishing location a number of times nothing was happening for me or for the other fishermen. It was also getting even warmer as we approached midday. I was set for a bad day’s fishing but an enjoyable day out of the office. I could see plenty of nice size browns and rainbows in front of me and even under my feet very close to the bank, but it was clear they were not interested in anything I was presenting to them.

So I decided to change my tactics completely, moving to an intermediate line a shorter leader and a very ugly orange, yellow and silver Christmas tree tail Blob… I will be totally honest with you now, my first cast was a disaster and landed in a heap and I did not get the distance I required. So I stripped the line back as fast as I could to recast and took a nice size blue close to the bank. After landing my first blue trout of the day, I repeated the same cast but this time out to the middle of the lake, gave the line a short tug to make the Blob sink, I then counted to 6 and stripped the line back. This resulted in one of the best 45 minutes of sport I have had in a long time. I was getting takes or follows every time and landed 2 more very nice blues making the final count of 1 x rainbow and 3 x nice size blues… Another great, if unexpected, fishing trip to Barn Elms…

Mark Watts
20th April 2018