It’s been a difficult summer on the fishing front, to put it mildly. The early hot spell has pretty much killed the fishing with very high water temperatures. I’ve been plugging away at Farmoor and a trip to Bewl with Beardy Paul but with no luck. In fact, I reckon I’ve had about thirty hours of fishing without even a pull. So, with slightly lower night-time temperatures and Farmoor re-opening F1, I decided to try again and booked a boat. The weather wasn’t great; generally sunny with some clouds, quite warm and very little breeze.

With what wind there was coming from the west, I headed out to that side of the water and, amazingly, there were fish rising. With rising excitement, I tied up a sugar cube emerger on the point of my floating line, with a small black buzzer on the middle dropper and a claret diawl bach on the top dropper. Typically, as I was in a boat, the fish were rising quite close to the bank so I manoeuvred the boat as close as I could and started casting towards the bank. I caught a small rainbow on the claret diawl bach but, infuriatingly, I couldn’t get any takes on the point fly despite trying several different dries. The fish were rising but weren’t interested. Eventually, I twigged that they were taking Sedges which were unusual to see in the morning. Typically, by the time I’d figured out what was happening and changed my flies, the rises died down. I got a few swirls and half a take but nothing more.

With the wind picking up a little and changing direction, I decided to try drifting across the middle of the water. I tried a few different combinations of nymphs, deeper buzzers and fry imitations with no interest. Eventually, after a few fruitless hours, I went back to the buzzer and diawl bach but tried a tequila blob on the point, hoping it might attract the fish and would otherwise keep the line a few feet under the surface. I had two fish on the first drift, one each to the buzzer and diawl bach, and then another on the second drift, coming to the blob. I tried drifting across the same patch but the wind had changed direction again and the takes died off.

As the afternoon wore on, I decided to go back to the west side again and again found fish rising, although only sporadically. I managed another two, both on the diawl bach, by casting in front of rising fish and giving the line a quick strip back on front of them.

Overall, not a bad day and nice to be drifting on a boat and able to cast at rising fish. Even better to actually catch a few!