All The Single Ladies

After finishing the decorating I rushed over to Mayfield with my well earned free pass out and managed to get there around 4pm before the traffic built up. After enduring a thunder storm on the way I wondered if I'd made a boo boo but on arrival the sun was shining. I peered into Her Majesty below and couldn't see anything moving so I set up and threw caution to the wind.
My mate Commo mentioned his missed takes here yesterday and I was pretty much suffering the same fate with the odd trout here and there, all on completely different flies and it proved impossible to find a magic fly as there was no fixed menu. Luckily as I neared the bridge the rain came again but I happily fished from under the bridge until it stopped - Jammy Git.

I managed a few trout which I feel were well earned due to frantically tearing through my fly box all the way up to the weir, and with a few nice trout including this most beautiful coloured brown below how could I complain.

I climbed up the bank at the weir to sit on the wall for a rest while overseeing the battle field and
watched the warrior below pull out a couple of fish on nymphs. During another sunny spell you could see billions of caenis on the bend below the weir buzzing around, maybe the anglers curse hadn't helped. I parked my big but for sometime, in fact the angler below had fished the pool out and was long gone but with just a handful of fish I wasn't doing my bull at a gate impression tonight, I was happy in my surroundings and was enjoying the peace.

The riffle on the bend had all but disappeared narrowing the channel leaving the high gravel bar bone dry, totally transforming this stretch by smoothing the surface removing the chance of a few fish in the fast water below the weir. These new changes have resulted in delicate rising fish that will only fall to delicate well presented small flies and they have a month of Sundays to decide if they fancy your offering.

Suddenly a LDO passed by my nose, then another and so on, Jesus! this quickly became the biggest olive hatch I'd seen and the ladies were lying in wait to ambush the little buggers. I couldn't believe how many put their hands up blowing their cover, sipping these olives like there was no tomorrow. I quickly chose my fly and hooked into this beauty below first cast and I was so appreciative of our encounter.

One after the other these ladies fell to their knees for me, queuing up to meet me and I couldn't believe my luck, it was similar to the green light on the Grand Prix. All hell broke out every cast with large grayling splashing, tugging and pulling to the net.

Needless to say I was in paradise and the fish just kept coming snaffling my frogs fanny'd fly (clue) on almost every cast. I decided to fish my way back down and the hatch switched back to caenis and the takes stopped instantly. Me being an inquisitive sod, I couldn't resist wading back up into the trickle of olives that were still hatching at the top end and to my amazement, wallop! straight back into large grayling, 5 more to be precise. I would have never believed it, I could cast upstream for a beautiful grayling at will and then casting downstream to rising fish with the same fly was like pi**ing in the wind. It dawned on me just how much you need to be in the right place at the right time interms of hatching flies, and as a result I will always be on the move before long in search for a similar experience.

This night was to prove my best grayling fishing to date, resulting in 20 big grayling coming to hand and a fair few missed, all caught on the dry which was especially pleasing. I stayed long enough for the LDO's to fade away at which point the Ladies also lowered their hands for another day. I had to pinch myself walking back to the car, a truly amazing fishing spell had jumped out of the blue, bringing me so much joy, so ecstatic I couldn't help doing my dance version of Beyonce's Single Ladies half way down the field m- Mint.