14 December 2003

It was that time again. The West End Fly-Fishing Club was holding its annual grayling fishing competition on the River Test. It is a friendly affair, so long as you aren’t churlish enough to win. As last year’s winner, I am talking from experience.

The day started out bright and chilly. The wind was quite brisk, but not too difficult to fish in.

Hughie conjured up one of his gut-busting Irish breakfasts with the full works, including kidneys, after which we staggered off to do battle. The Drunken Dun Shield is awarded to the angler who catches the biggest grayling on the day.

I’d surveyed most of the river in two visits in November and found the river levels very much lower than last season. The distribution of the fish had changed in some areas. A few of last year’s holding pools were too shallow to keep the larger fish and other runs ignored before now looked quite promising.

Unashamedly determined to win again, I set off with a three hook set up, consisting of a deer-hair sedge pattern on the top dropper, a black spider on the middle dropper and a gold-head pheasant tail nymph on the point. It was an awkward combination and although I detected a few takes, they were observed too late to connect with anything. I removed the middle dropper and replaced the point fly with a latex killer bug pattern.

Working my way back upstream, I came across a deep pool backed by a solid layer of trees. Not being able to back cast, I tried a crude form of spey casting upstream. The first couple of attempts scared a couple of big grayling away, but further upstream, I spotted another good grayling and side cast the flies beyond it.

As the flies drew level with me, a large trout slipped to one side and intercepted the the deer-hair sedge. The sedge fly had become waterlogged and followed the killer bug below the surface. The next thing I knew the trout shot out of the water and then sped ten metres downstream. However, it soon tired and I was able to land it quickly. It was a 20” sea trout kelt and slipped back into the water, returned to its former lie.

The grayling were very jittery by then, so spotting Ken further upstream, I stopped for a chat. He had spotted a sizeable shoal of grayling in a long glide and had one smallish fish from it.

We then leap-frogged each other through a deeper glide towards a foot bridge. There were some big grayling and brown trout lying up in the pool beside the bridge, but they were no mugs. Their tails flickered at a faster pace as we approached, ready to shoot away in an instant, so we made a few half-hearted casts and then moved on.

Ken found another shoal under some willows and stayed to concentrate on them. I went on to a pool I’d located a shoal in a fortnight ago and also changed my set up.

I had a Cortland 444 yellow floating line with a minicom loop connecting the line to a straight 6lb leader about 5ft in length. Around 18” from the line I put in a dropper and tied in some fluorescent green indicator floss to this. On the point I tied on a maize coloured Czech nymph with copper ribbing.

The shoal was still there and they liked the nymph. I had eight grayling, seven of which were over 10” in length and lost another five. By the time Ken joined me twenty minutes later, the takes had dried up, so we worked our way back to the lodge for a sandwich and coffee.

I was surprised to find no one else had taken a fish of any size. Geordie had fourteen, but reckoned all were tiddlers, taken on spiders, I believe. However, just as I was making my way back, I met Jamie, who had a fish which would match or possibly better my biggest fish. He was fishing with a spider pattern of his own tying. It looked very good too.

The weather was turning overcast, which suited me. The low sun of the morning cast long shadows over the river making stalking difficult. I had a brief spell fishing the fast water below a small weir and lost two good fish before landing another just over 10”.

I’d never realised I had a competitive spirit before, but it was rearing its head and I felt compelled to search out a championship winning grayling. I knew exactly where I would find one; at the pool where I caught the sea-trout kelt, but fishing that spot was not easy. Normal casting was impossible, due to the trees lining the bank and it was at least 2 metres deep, so wading was out of the question.

Working my way up from the tail of the pool, I reached the main pool and saw a very nice grayling on its own. I tried the sideways cast with the rod held out in front of me and dropped the nymph about 3 metres upstream of the fish. It took without hesitation and the indicator disappeared underwater. There was some slack in the line and it took me a couple of seconds to tighten into it. I was lucky, it was still on.

It put up a tremendous fight for a grayling and took a few minutes to bring in. This was a decent cock fish. I might be in with a chance now.

  Top grayling and grayling hunter

I then stopped at the spot Ken was fishing in the morning and saw the shoal he had been trying for. Most were small, but a couple were larger specimens. Circling back downstream a few metres, I crawled back upstream to a point about 3 metres behind the best fish and cast about 1.5 metres above it. It took the nymph and was landed after another hard fight. This was about 1lb in weight.

I then tried for the second fish and hooked it, but the hook only held for some thirty seconds. Working back to the footbridge, I took another three fish around the size of the earlier ones. A sparrowhawk shot low over the river and dipped over the hedge opposite, disappearing like a shooting star.

I was tempted to try another cast below the weir, but it was getting late and I didn’t want to risk missing the deadline of 4.30pm.

Back at the fishing hut, there were a lot of gloomy faces. Very few fish had been caught and those were quite small. Hughie took one look at my best fish and declared it the winner as nothing else came near. It actually weighed 1lb 6oz, not a specimen, but good enough. And they say lightning never strikes twice in the same place.

Winning last year was bad enough, twice in a row was too much for some. Someone claimed the fish had freezer burns on it, others looked a bit sick, Duane was totally disgusted and the rest are trying to think of ways to get me disqualified. Well, I can’t help it. If the truth be known, I think I won because I covered the most territory and fished at the depth the largest fish were lying in during the day, with the right fly. Czech ‘em, as a certain National fishing champion is wont to say.