Fly fishing – finally caught a few!

I was looking for somewhere novice friendly but fairly decent where I would be able to practice my casting without worrying too much about what was behind me. Toft Newton is a concrete bowl reservoir which is stocked weekly and has some very big fish. I suppose in the back of my mind I fancied catching one, guess what? I didn’t!

I phoned Jason the fishery manager and he was really helpful, the weather was breezy but reasonably warm and while there was a threat of rain it looked as though I would get a few hours in before I got wet. I decided that I needed to learn how to deal with the wind when I was casting and actually, provided you don’t try to cast into a head wind it’s not too bad at all.  I arrived at the fishery despite the sat nav’s best attempts at thwarting me and went to the lodge which has a kitchen and a small tackle shop where I found Jason. He advised me where to go and of a few successful fly patterns which I purchased.  The first thing that I noticed was that the mid week anglers were predominately 50 plus and uncannily friendly. Word got round that I was a newbie and honestly they couldn’t do enough to help. Different rigs were tried and a selection of flies found their way into my fly box courtesy of my nearest bank-side neighbour, a gentleman called Ian – didn’t get his surname. They showed me how to fish a sinking line with a long leader and a floating booby fly on the point with a small black buzzer on a dropper. The position of the dropper varies the depth at which the buzzer is fished, the closer it is to the fly line braided loop the deeper it fishes. I also tried fishing a floating line with a nymph on the point and a buzzer but to no avail. I got one fish come to the floating booby as soon as it landed but that was it for me. Ian caught 2 fish and many of the others around us also blanked. Jason said that it had been a very slow day and that I shouldn’t be too disheartened. I wasn’t, because I had fished ok, no nasty wind knots – in fact no problem with the casting at all. The old lads at Toft were very happy with my casting for a newbie and they had a go with my gear and again found that it was fine.

I tell you what got me though – they were all sitting on little seats. Some were even using these bite indicators which as far as I am concerned are floats. I never expected to go trout fishing and see people sat on seats float fishing! After a few hours on my feet I can see the advantage of the seats though. My feet hurt like hell after a few hours – I still weigh 98kg which is not light!