After a busy few weeks, I managed to get an afternoon pass on the last May bank holiday for an afternoon/evening session at Farmoor. The weather had been hot and stormy all weekend so I wasn’t expecting much.
When I arrived, it was cloudy but warm and the fish were obligingly at the top of the water with the occasional head and tail rise. I started with my usual pattern for these conditions: a sugar-cube buzzer on point, a light-weigh buzzer on the middle dropper and a diawl bach on the top dropper – a washing line approach. I was into a couple of decent 3-4lb rainbows quickly, both falling to the black buzzer. Then things went very quiet and the air was eerily still. Lo and behold, the heavens opened and the rain was torrential for the next hour. As I had the evening ahead of me, I took shelter and waited it out.
When I returned, the rain had livened things up as there were loads of rising fish but I couldn’t get any interest on buzzers or diawls below the surface or midge-type dries. I decided to move round to the causeway which separate’s the two waters and found a hatch of small, light-tan sedges. I wasn’t entirely convinced the trout were taking them as the rises were light, graceful sucks or gentle head of tails, not the usual splashy rises association with sedges. However, I thought I’d try my luck and tried a silver sedge which I’d tied a few days before.
Within a few casts, I saw a rainbow glide up from the depths and gently sip down my sedge pattern! I caught another four in almost exactly the same manner; quite close in, giving the fly just a little flick across the water and watching the fish rise to take it. It was very unusual for sedges but perhaps these lighter, earlier ones are less active on the water. The fish were close in and got scared off easily so for the final few I was actively stalking feeding fish, on dries, barely 4-5 feet out. Who says concrete reservoir are dull!
The real life sedge and my imitation. Not a very close match but the trout didn’t seem to mind!