Much better weather than expected. Moderate wind from the south west, with cloud cover, some sun and a few showers. Quint warned that the fishing had been extremely difficult, but stocking levels were good. I was with Dougie Skedd and we both agreed to start with dries; no surprise there. Dougie started with a half-hog and a hopper and I went with a Grunter on the tail and a black gnat. First port of call was Arnmach, to see if we could tempt any resident fish. There wasn’t much moving, but after a short time Dougie managed a nice bright, lean fish on the hopper. I was next, but despite a great take managed to break-off the fish. The story of my season, I’m afraid. I then had a nice swirl but didn’t connect when I lifted.
We stayed there for a while, but there were very few fish showing and even when we managed to get over them they didn’t seem interested. Next was a move along the reeds at the Butts, down to Chicken Leg bay. Dougie managed 2 fish out of the blue, one to each fly, and we both had a couple of swirls without connecting.
Eventually I managed a really good fish to a Griffith’s gnat. By this time, I had changed flies on a number of occasions, without any interest. We decided to move to the Malling shore, where we moved nothing until passing Stable Point, where Dougie had a rise without hooking the fish. Then down to the end of the Rookery / Sam’s Point, where Dougie rose a fish on the dap.
Nothing after that, and we finished relatively early with 4 fish to the boat.
A tough day! I suppose that we should have changed from the dries!
The Club’s 10 rods managed 24 fish.