With a little luck, I managed to get the week off before Christmas and, with festive things well organised, I nipped off for a couple of hours fishing at my favourite local venue, Meon Springs.

As with most of this winter, it was a relatively balmy day with a bit of sun and, unusually, very little wind. The main lake at Meon Springs is long and thin with one little promontory about halfway down that offers casting through one hundred and eighty degrees which, luckily for me, was free that morning. I tackled up simply with a floating line (Meon is not very deep), tapered leader and a small tippet giving a leader of around 10 feet. As I arrived at the water I saw trout rising so quickly threw on a CDC buzzer emerger, thinking the unusually warm weather and sun may be resulting in a little hatch. However, after twenty minutes with no interest I noticed the rises were quite splashy and there was the odd little rise from little fry, so perhaps there was a little fry bashing going on.

I didn’t fancy tugging a lure at a small venue like this so opted for a small black nymph with a lime green straggle head. Within two casts I’d missed a good take and then a couple more casts later and I brought a lovely 4lb rainbow to the net. Within the next thirty minutes, I landed another beauty at 3.5lb, lost one and missed a few more takes.

With my two bag limit done, I had a quick coffee break and went for a little fish down on Meon Beat, which is a long, thin stretch of water, almost river like which is operated as a catch and release only. I’ve fished here a few times and the trout, especially the brownies, are notoriously tricky to catch. Small and natural is the key, so I popped on a size 14 hares ear I’d tied myself the previous week with just a small holo strip on the top of the thorax, as a bit of something different.

I walked along the bang, throwing the line out and letting the wind and slight current drift the fly across the water, I suspect very similar to river fishing although I haven’t tried it yet. After twenty minutes with no action, I saw a flash of bronze in the water around my fly, swiftly followed by a flash of silver as a brown and rainbow trout went for the fly at the same time. Fortunately for me, the brownie got their first and put up a lovely fight for a small 1 to 1.5lb fish.

I decided to call it a day while I was ahead and get home early for some pre-christmas brownie points with the missus. What a perfect mornings winter fishing and an early Christmas present!

General conditions – Cloudy with sunny spells, cold and windy.

Wind direction – Northerly

Flies that worked – Black nymph with green tinsel thorax, Hares Ear