After our good day out on Bewl last time (https://beardybros.co.uk/on-the-water/beardy-bros-on-bewl-reservoir-april-2021), Beardy Paul and I were keen to get back out on the water. Unfortunately, we couldn’t manage it until early June just as the weather was starting to heat up. We were concerned about fishing in bright sun and hot temperatures; we needn’t have been.

It was overcast when we arrived some some weather reports suggesting rain early on, clearing later. It was still relatively warm and we hoped that the cloud cover would bring the fish up. Once in the boat we decided to try some spots down Hook Straight which, for some reason, we hadn’t tried before. We stopped first in the middle of the straight aiming to drift into the shore but the wind had other ideas and we just seemed to meander in a circle. We tried a few different options with Beardy Paul on a sinking line while I had a midge tip but we didn’t get any interest and saw little sign of fish. We tried the same in Seven Pound Creek where there were a few rising fish but no interest. At this point the rain started and it barely stopped for the rest of the day.

We started motoring over towards the main bowl when we saw a few fish rising in open water, so we threw out the drogue. On my second cast I had a violent take almost as soon as the line hit the water on a black quill cruncher. While that was the only action we saw there, it did suggest that the fish were high in the water. We both decided to change to a floater and try a drift in the main bowl towards Chingley Wood. This was immediately better and we both had a couple of fish on this drift, a couple falling to a blob/FAB on the point and the others to black nymphs.

After a break for lunch and a chance to dry off a little, we tried a drift across the corner of Chingley Wood (for another fish) and then into Bewl Straight (for nothing). We’d had five to the boat by this point but didn’t feel like we’d found the fish. We tried a drift across the water below the boils and had another couple of fish but noticed some rising trout in the slack water between the dam and the inflatable by the playground. I swung the boat close into the dam and we finally drifted over a good pod of fish, bringing several fish to the net. We repeated the drift several times with consistent results. The fish were all stockies but keen to feed or chase and sitting high up in the water with most coming to a blob or black nymphs (a black quill cruncher worked best for me).

For the last hour or so we anchored up closer to the dam and had some great fun trying to tempt rising trout with limited success but also getting a lot of takes on small black buzzers fished under the surface.

It was a great day with eighteen rainbows to the boat but it barely stopped raining. We were both absolutely soaked and need to look for better ‘light’ waterproofs!