Report from Tony Marchant
Penny and I arrived at Grafham Water with our motorhome at about two O’clock in the afternoon there was substantial wind blowing so I decided to fish the Hill Farm north shore at Pylon Point, a substantial walking distance from the camp site.
The reservoir was extremely low. I would anticipate that it was only about 50% full and a lot of pumping from the Great Ouse will have to take place over this winter to get it back to capacity by next spring or more drought orders will have to be invoked.
So, I put on my waders, walked down to Pylon Point and found I was the only person fishing there. Not a good sign! Using a floating line and a caste of 3 Shrimp patterns with a blob on the point. I fished for approximately two hours and only had one pull. Not a very good start to my fishing week! Now I understood why I was the only one angler fishing there, basically the fish (and therefore the fishermen) had deserted the area!
The following day ( Tuesday) I decided to fish off the dam, this is where most people (12+) were fishing. Not really surprising as it was very tricky to fish anywhere else due to the low water and the mud and the state of the wind which was strong and coming from the North. At least fish were showing off the dam and some were being caught. I started with a couple of dry foam daddies but the trout just bumped them and would not take. I did eventually get one fish using them but soon changed to shrimps, that generated a couple of pulls but nothing that stayed attached. It was now 11.30am and the wind was getting stronger and blowing directly into the dam making casting rather tricky. Gave up with the shrimps and changed to a gold based humungous on my sink tip. This did the trick and I caught 5 and lost a few over the next couple of hours. One of the escapees must have been over 6lb, shame not have landed that one.
On Wednesday went back to the dam, the wind was now very “fresh” and preventing bankers fishing anywhere on the reservoir apart from the dam, and even that proved to be tricky. Waves were too high to spot fish on the surface so back to my humungous with a sink tip and managed to bank 5 fish. The chap fishing next to me still had a dry net at midday, he then changed tactics and fished egg flies under a bung. From then on he caught a fish every five minutes for the next hour! Needless to say I didn’t bring my egg flies with me so trimmed a blob down to egg fly portions and managed one fish.
Thursday, no fishing, took the motorhome to a Cambridge Park & Ride and spend a very enjoyable day “doing” Cambridge, never ever been there before.
Friday, my last day fishing, the temperature dropped and the wind was STILL blowing from the North West and still “fresh”. The waves hitting the dam were a foot high and casting into the teeth of the wind was somewhat problematical, I was lucky if a got half my normal distance. Fortunately some fish were still relatively close in and I secured a couple on a minkie prior to my early stop. Overall a tricky but enjoyable trip.
Worcester Fly Dressers 