Draycote – 22 April 2005

Neil and I had a late start. First we had to drive to the Pantry, a truckers caff 3 miles south of Dunchurch for a proper fishermans breakfast and then felt obliged to enter Lyttles in Dunchurch to get some local info and flies. Just as well, as it happens.

It was 11.15am before we actually got into the boat.

The day started off with hazy sunshine and was quite mild. Keith Causer, the fishery manager gave us a good run down of what was working and where and we set off in full anticipation of a good day.

Starting off at Biggin Bay, we tried out mini lures, cormorants and damsels on intermediate lines, but had no takers. Some huge bags were taken along the natural bank in recent days on damsels, but the wind had just switched to the south-east today and the sport went a bit quiet.

After an hour of this, clouds began to build and the wind got a lot colder and very gusty. We surmised the fish were likely to have gone down deep and so switched to buzzers on floating lines. I used a mixture of black buzzers, including a standard black epoxy pattern I’d just bought at Lyttles. We also moved back to the other shore, just past the launch ramp of the sailing club.

In a few minutes I felt something on my line, I retrieved for some 20 seconds thinking I’d got into a bunch of weed when the rod bucked a couple of times. It was a fish, but what kind of fish? Eventually this trout woke up and put up a poor fight before I netted it. I was amazed to find it was an over-wintered fish, long, lean and stuffed with all manner of natural food, including fry, buzzers and various nymphs.

It had taken the black epoxy buzzer I’d just bought.

Shortly after that, Neil had a good fish on the same fly which gave a much better account of itself. It was also a long, lean over-wintered fish, but behaved like one. It had taken the same buzzer pattern.

After that, we had nothing more in the next half hour, so headed for the corner of the dam, but the wind was so stiff it was no fun. Waves were crashing over the bows and giving us a bit of a soaking, so we went back to Biggin Bay where it was relatively sheltered.

I changed the middle dropper from the black holographic buzzer I used successfully in Bewl to a blood worm. The Draycote trout don’t appear to like the holographic buzzer. I tried it later and still it got no attention.

Within a few minutes, I took a smallish trout on the bloodworm and then we waited and waited for nothing more. Taking off the bloodworm, I accidentally dropped the rest of the cast overboard, including the epoxy buzzer I got from Lyttles.

Up to then I’d been using a floating fry pattern to keep the buzzers at 5ft and 10ft depth, but found it sank after a few minutes. I decided to remove that and try fishing 3 buzzers instead and rely on the line to keep them at depth. The line still sank, but no faster than with the floating fry on the leader. When it got down a couple of feet, I brought it back up with a slow figure of eight retrieve.

Neil suggested we try the cornfield area after one of Keith’s tip offs. Anchoring up 100 metres offshore, we continued with buzzers and he had 3 in about 45 minutes, all on the Lyttles black buzzer. As I had none left, he kindly gave me one of his own very similar tying, but by then, the takes had dried up.

It was getting late, so he suggested we go back to the other shore for a last cast or two before packing up. We returned to the same spot as earlier and in the next 20 minutes I had two trout to Neil’s buzzer. Takes were easy enough to spot just watching the line movement.

I wasn’t too unhappy to finish the day. We were getting pretty cold by then. April can produce very unpredictable weather and we were not really dressed for it. The trout were not keen either. We did not see many fish caught all day and saw very few moving or rising. Nearly all of ours were taken around 9 to 10 ft down.

There are still plenty of fish around by all accounts, So I may give it another go soon.