Even though we’d spent the previous weekend on our 3 day tour at Eyebrook and Elinor it was still nice to get out on the new local lake for a few hours on a Friday evening. Sport at the new lake since I joined in April has been nothing short of epic with my worst 4 hour session coming in a six fish! I’ve probably been there 6 times now with catch rates coming in on average around 7/8 fish per session so the fishing there so far has been fantastic. I think I’ve learnt more about fishing in the last few months than I have in a long time with classic scenarios that you read about in the magazines, such catching on the drop, on the hang, fly choice, fish depth (see Beardy Neils great post about Farmer), fishing the margins first, matching the hatch, etc all happening regularly. All in all its been a brilliant first few months and there’s no sign of it stopping yet.

I got down to the lake around 4 pm and it was pretty windy so I grabbed a sheltered spot and rigged up my 3 droppers with huge black buzzers. We’d fished the weekend before with very large black buzzers so I figured this would be a good starting point. There’s a big lesson to learn here – Lakes and their locations are very different, don’t presume, look in the water! After an hour with nothing I moved around the lake so I had the wind coming from my side and I could drift the flies along with the wind. I also notice buzzers in the water that were a lot smaller than those we saw the previous weekend so I put on my usual small red butt black quill buzzer along with a hares ear and a larger floating black buzzer on the point so I could washing line. A few casts in and I caught a cracking 4lb fish on the buzzer on the dropper. After a few missed takes the sun came up and the takes dried up so I put on something a bit heavier. A while ago I bought a few flies from Flash Attack Flies and I had one I hadn’t used before. Knowing that black buzzers with a bit of red work well on the lake I decided to try this Cut Throat Muskins Cruncher. To say this fly worked well would be a bit of an understatement! Maybe I got the depth just right and the fly was a good match for the buzzers. Maybe the red or filaments were a good trigger. Either way, it worked and I had fish after fish from a few different places around one corner of the lake. The cloud and sun were interchangeable over the few hours I was there and I caught fish high in the water on the drop and on smaller buzzers on my top dropper as well as deeper down on the cruncher. I caught 8 in total and missed a LOT of very quick takes. I even had one fish take very quickly, which I missed so I left the fly where it was. It came back again for another take which I missed again and then AGAIN for another take which I finally connected with but unfortunately his luck was better than mine and he came off. I don’t think I’ve ever had a fish come back round 3 times for a fly.

I also had a fish on the end which had taken my middle dropper coming in to the net only a few yards out when another fish came along and started chasing after the point fly which was trailing around behind a very active fish that didn’t want to be netted. Almost 2 fish at once!

Great fish, great sport and lots of fun. Couldn’t be happier with the new lake.