Frandy, day session, 10th June.

Here we were on a new venue, a water that could obviously be wild and woolly in the wrong conditions... and it was a glorious day!  The wind was, as the weather forecasters say, light and variable, with the accent on variable.  The ceiling was about 50:50 sun and cloud cover, and when ever the cloud came across, the fish were up and rising in a flash.  The ones we spooned had only daphnia in them, but we saw plenty of black terrestrials being sconed.  We also saw some interesting insect life coming down the water, including some huge stone fly and large brook duns.  Both were probably hatched on the river Devon upstream and blown down onto the water.

Early on, the sun had the upper hand, and the only rod to get going then had fish to static nymph technique and a black Howwood.  Once the cloud started to get a hand in, it was dries, dries, dries.  The colour was black, black, black.

John G shows off a resident, taken on dry fly

Successful flies included black hopper, black ethafoam beetle and  black, pearly wing bits.  The fish tended to be up once-ing from a deep lie, which made covering risers a hit-miss affair.  You were often better off looking to put your flies into generally fishy water and let them find it, O-T-B.  Not to be outdone by all this dry fly stuff, Lenny took 5 fish on top of the water pulling gear.

Top bag on the day was 5 fish for 6 lb 6 oz, plus 11 returned.  In all, the club's 16 rods weighed in 48 fish for 58 lb 7 oz, plus 20 returned.  There were a few nice brownies included in the "returned" section, as was a rainbow of about 3.5 lb