#4 - Dry Fly Fishing - Early Season Brown Trout

Well, I'm going to have another fishing trip. I did say I was going to wait until it warmed up a little bit. And I suppose, strictly speaking, it has warmed up a little bit. It's about 14, 15 degrees centigrade, which isn't too warm. But there's lots and lots of flies around today. Sun's very high in the sky. It's probably about one o'clock in the afternoon. Got to be some fish rising today. Same gear as last time. Still using the same dry fly as last time. And I've got a couple of hours at it. So I'm hoping that To at the very least see some fish today. Saw one last time and managed to catch it. Which was a good result. I want to go one better this time. In fact I want to go two or three better. It's such a beautiful day. Absolutely beautiful. At the end of that tree there. There's what looks to be quite a big fish rising. And it may not look very far on the screen there. But that's way out of my casting range. With this little rod. I've got a limited back cast behind me. I've only got a seven foot rod. And as I say, that doesn't look like a long way, but it is a long way. I'm going to try fishing a little bit closer in. There's a little rock in the middle of the stream. See if I can catch anything behind that. And then I'll try and move my way down to that fella there. Well, that didn't take long. A little barbless hook came out lovely. There you go. Another lovely little brown trout. Got little red spots on that. Absolutely lovely. Slipping back. Right, now let's go for us, Mama. Mama, seems like a really good fish there. I don't want to thrash the water trying it. Put this out beyond the limit of where it really should go. I'm going to try and creep down a little bit further. I'm just worried about the back cast. I'm going to try going down a little bit further because I'm sure that's a good fish. It's beyond the limit of where I can cast. I'll try further down, but I don't think I can get into that one. Fresh, and that was a huge mouth that came up. Wish I had the camera on that. His mouth looked huge. I can't believe I missed my chance with that one. I saw its huge mouth come up and I just whipped the fly straight out of its mouth. It's definitely one to come back for. Now if you've got this far, you obviously like fishing. If you like fishing you will love my friend's channel. His name is Andy. He's based out of Australia and he makes, in my opinion, the best fishing videos on YouTube. I've watched quite a lot of fishing videos. I think his are the best. Please check his channel out and give him your support. He's an awesome guy. Even just along this little path it's amazing how many edible plants there are. Wild garlic. You can eat pretty much any part of that. Smells lovely as well. We've got some watercress in the boggy bit here. Lovely peppery taste. And in here we've got Himalayan balsam. This dies right back in the winter. But it's the invasive weed which produces exploding pods that look like little chrysalis that a caterpillar would go into. You touch those in autumn and they just explode, scattering seeds everywhere. Hence, it spreads all over the place, generally from riverbanks up into the woodland. But those little pods, when they're ripe, just ready to explode, they taste quite nutty. So they're quite a nice one to eat. So even just in this little space, you've got three ingredients for a salad. Here we've got some wild chives as well, lovely oniony flavour, if you were on a bit of a camping trip and you're going to keep the fish that you caught, these chives chopped up into little bits with a bit of garlic stuffed inside the trout, barbecued on the fire, absolutely beautiful. Feels like a good fish this one, by my standards it is a good fish, I don't know how the hell I'm going to land it though. Well there we go, look at the size of that fella, what a beauty, not very fat because it's early season. Give that one a month and it's going to be a real beast of a fish. I'm going to put him back now. Absolutely over the moon with that. In the calm stretch like this, it's very difficult to catch the fish. Firstly, because the water surface isn't disturbed, they can see straight through it. And if you break the skyline, they can see you creeping up on them. Secondly, every time they rise, they tend to rise in a different place because they're quite often just cruising around looking for the nice bigger flies to eat. That's what this one was doing. I'm doing, luckily, I kind of had the line near me, I saw him rise and then I put it above it, hoping that it had risen and then it was heading upstream. As it happened it was. This time when it took, I let it turn and then set the hook. I didn't make the same mistake as I made with that other one, because that other one that I had before, and I'm not just saying this, but it was bigger. Its mouth was huge, it was like a big fish. That was a lovely, decent, over average fish for this river, but that one I missed before Paul was an absolute belter. So I'm definitely coming back here. Well that was a very successful trip by my standards, especially considering that I only saw fish rise in one pool. We caught two out of it so that's pretty good. Very pleased with that and I'm extra pleased that I got that nice big fella as well. Wasn't as colourful as the little one but it was a nice big fish and as I say in a couple of months time if nobody gets that or if none of the goosanders or cormorants or herons or otters or whatever else is killing fish in this river gets it. It's going to be a lovely fish in a few months time once it gets fed up. One regret is whipping the fly out of the mouth of that really big one but it's there for next time and if I get time in the next few days I'm going to be back down because that's the sort of fish that if somebody else catches it they're probably just going to kill it and take it home. I like to catch it, have a look, show you fellas and then put it back. I always like the chance of catching a fish twice or more. I always use barbless, so it minimises the damage to the fish, it's just a clean hole through the lip, when you take it out, it comes out really easily, so please use barbless, please put the fish back if you can, thanks very much for watching, and I shall catch you next time. Just have a quick look under here and see if there's any slow worms, nought, well nought that is, apart from a toad, that's an exceptionally old, knobbly, grumpy looking toad, it can live for 40 years.