Mayfield Magic

I started around the wier as always, and tried bumbling some heavy check nymphs along the bottom of the faster runs. I hooked into a fish which gave a good old tussle, resulting in the trout pictured below, which was long and lean and ready to fatten itself up through spring. I apologise now for the picture quality, as I forgot my camera so had to use my phone for the first time, this was a real scary ordeal, a toss up between possibly crushing the phone with my bare hands or dropping it in the river, luckily neither became a reality. After a short while an old chap turned up with a big bag of maggots and the challenge was set, maggot vs fly which was a battle I'd lost before many times. I began to wade downstream check nymphing and so the fun started, I took 3 grayling in succession, one of which was a finer grayling as any I've caught this year, the grayling are always spectacular from this stretch and never disappoint. Needless to say I had to use my phone to take the picture below, and I remember thinking "oh well thats probably as big as I'll get today, so hopefully I wont have to get it out again." I finished the day on 6 grayling and 2 trout, which isn't a bad ratio for grayling season, especially as spring is in the air and the trout are starting to grab all they can after surviving on rations through the winter.

At the end of the session I met the old chap at the check in station, where he told me his red maggots had caught him 11 superb grayling, but he was a friendly old chap so losing the challenge was easy to swallow, especially after he bigged up my results on the fly.

While driving home I was feeling very pleased with myself that yet another good day had come after a quiet spell in Jan/Feb. The river was in fine form, as many rivers have been through most of this winter. I'll have to tie some Mayfly patterns soon which will definitely lift my mood, dreaming of those huge summer browns.