An article by Rob Waddington.

12 years ago, I lived in Yorkshire and was happy fishing the Wharfe, the Ure, and many other North Country rivers for brown trout. I was then offered a job in Rutland, 100  miles down the A1. I’ve fished there with Colin, my ‘southern mate’ I thought, and I remembered that it was rather good.

It was fly fishing, and it was trout. Not the trout fishing that I’d been doing up North though, I scoffed.

Bubbling, sparkling rivers, flicking a tiny ‘grey duster’ under the branches in a tiny area of slack water where a fish was lying, lifting the little rod into a wriggling brown trout as bright and as wild as you can get. That’s what I was used to.

Rutland fishing was lure stripping, wasn’t it? It was pulling out big, soft stockies, and as many as you could get! However, the job looked good, and I thought I’d give it a go.

We moved lock, stock, barrel, kids and fishing tackle to a surprisingly picturesque part of England; rolling countryside, village greens with thatched cottages, real beer and cricket, you know the sort of thing? (If you do, keep it to yourself, shhh..) Eventually, we had a real stroke of luck. We found a house by the lake, a fisherman’s dream, just yards from the North shore, over-looking a renowned ‘hot spot’ for trout.

Following a shaky start, casting black & green tadpoles as far as I could (which in those days wasn’t too far!) I found that imitative flies worked best, with small buzzers taking the better fish and great dry fly fishing. It all started to fall into place; I had a nice rock (see below) to cast from; a bay just around the corner in case the wind inhibited my casting; It was rarely a busy spot, and even when it was we had a great time, laughing, sharing information (sometimes!); taking the ‘proverbial!’ I often took a jug of whiskey down from the house to share with some of the local characters when the weather was cold.

 I could nip down after work, winkle a couple of fish out and return, the hunter-gatherer, back home, 20 yards away. The house faced some of the most amazing sunsets I’d ever seen, over the lake. There was even potential for a bed and breakfast business for the missus. It was perfect! (I should have known..)

OK, there were the usual fresh stocked fish, but they didn’t stay like that for long. After a few weeks, they start turning bright wild! with a taste for buzzers.

I was catching hard fighting, immaculately finned silver rainbow trout right outside my front door. I was still, at that time using my North Country river tackle. I soon realised that it was pathetically inadequate and I’m sure I saw smoke coming from my tiny Battenkill reel when a 4 pound overwintered Rainbow took all my line and most of the backing on its first run!

Often, I was casting to individual, targeted fish with a dry fly. Can a boy from Yorkshire take much more of this fishing heaven? The quality of the fish and the style of fishing was a revelation. I had been seduced by this huge water and all memories of little river trout faded quickly.

About 5 years ago, the fishing changed. We had fewer buzzer hatches, hardly any Damsels, Corixa? Nothing!!!!!!!!! So it was back to the lures.

What happened?

Everyone I talked to had their own theories; cormorants; stocking policy, even global warming took some stick. I blamed the explosion of daphnia. Nature has her own way of doing things (if we humans don’t mess her about!), but the fishing was definitely different. You could still catch on buzzers and nymphs but not consistently. Very few fish could be seen taking food off the top of the water, so dry fly fishing was a waste of time. However, as I do like catching fish, I still caught fish, but using bright, ‘southern’ things; on boobies; tubes; sparklers; trolling with the wind, the lot! You have to give trout what they want and I certainly can’t tie a size 48 daphnia imitation! Not exactly how I like to fish, but I’m no super-purist, I do like to catch fish, and I found the ‘rudder’ fishing really exciting, like fishing for marlin but in miniature.

Then this year. No idea why nature I suppose. We have had amazing buzzers hatches, even up the North Arm, big buggers as well.
We even have Hawthorn flies and little orange ‘beetley’ things. There’s even a ‘new’ type of buzzer being seen, olive with bright orange ‘cheeks’, about a size 10. These are food items that you can imitate and the best thing was, the fish were eating them! What self-respecting trout would have a sickly bowl of porridgy daphnia when there were meaty buzzers on the menu.

So, the fishing was great again, fantastic actually; the new fishing coaching business was looking good; the B&B was busy, and then I did my back in! An old disk problem came back, pulling the outboard cord while trying to start an uncooperative engine!

So that’s why I was sitting on ‘Rob’s Rock’ (well, it is by my house) perched skew-wiff on a green, plastic B&Q garden chair catching trout on dry flies. I know the friendly doctor and the ‘babe-like’ osteopath said not to do any fishing, but I couldn’t resist it, who could? My Doctor caught me out fishing. She was making a house call to check on me in between her busy schedule saving lives, only to find me grappling with a bright silver muscley trout, precariously wobbling on the bendy, plastic chair. I tried to explain to her that I’d seen some fish rising from my bedroom; and that I’d just seen a huge trout out there of about 7lbs; and that it was the first time in 5years that I felt confident fishing with buzzers. “This is why I came to Rutland protestedalas, to no avail. Ok, it was a fair cop. I’d been found out and it was back to the house for me. She didn’t know what I was talking about anyway. I paid for that half hour of ecstasy with another day of bed confining agony.

So, I’m barred, doctor’s orders. No fishing for a while, at least another month. So, having done the back in good and proper now, I am missing the best early season fishing for some time, I’ve just heard about some monster catches coming from the bottom of the South Arm and it doesn’t get any better than that.just what I came here for. Bugger!

The Lodge Barnsdale, North Shore Rutland Water, Rutland LE15 8AB Tel: 01572 722422 722422

robwaddington@onetel.com | www.rutlandwaterflyfishing.co.uk