After my last session at Farmoor towards the end of November, we have had frosts, snow and a couple of storms. It would be interesting to see what effect this would have on the fish.

The wind had been blowing from the west steadily for the past week and, as luck would have it, it died down to a gentle breeze, which gave me the chance to fish on the eastern shore, into the wind. I started with a slow intermediate with a white humungous on the point and a black lure on the dropper. I fan cast, tried different retrieves and counted down to 20 seconds with no interest. I tried the same with a black humungous and silver invicta with no joy and then the same on a fast intermediate to get down deeper, all to no avail.

I have found you need to go and find the fish at this time of year, and as the wind had picked up I shifted round onto the causeway and tried the slow intermediate again. After going down the depths I got an aggressive take on a fast roly-poly after 20 seconds and put a lovely grown-on brown trout into the net. I tried another few areas on the causeway as I worked my way up to the west bank to see if I could find more fish. Again, once I reached 20 seconds I brought a nice rainbow to the net but then had nothing else.

As the wind dropped, I decided to go back down the causeway and managed to pick up another three lovely brown trout, all falling to the black and silver humungous. I’d say all the brownies were 3-4lb. The rangers got hold of a bulk lot of brown trout last autumn and put them into F1 (the catch and release section). I’ve had a few out since then but they have certainly grown on well in that time. If they survive, there could be some very large brownies to target in the next few years.

I didn’t manage to find any good concentrations of fish (and the rainbows were conspicuous by there absence, other than that one) but by changing locations and depths I managed five good fish, which is pretty good for a winters day. There was a bank competition on F2 a couple of days later where the top rod only managed 3. This suggests the rainbows may have moved out and into deeper water already. This is surprising as the water is not that cold yet but I might get a boat out over christmas and see if I can find some.