Blog — guided flyfishing

When I got the call, "would you do a guided day on Ladybower Reservoit", there was only going to be one answer, yes!. This picturesque venue, has just opened its doors once again as as trout fishery, and its certainly creating a stir ! Having never fished it myself before, I was relishing the challenge of finding, and catching the fish - hopefully !! Richard, my partner for the day, has recently took to trout fishing, and was keen to improve all aspects of his game. Entering his first ever competition the weekend before, and catching his pb of 14...

Both Rutland & Grafham Water have experienced some fantastic buzzer fishing this last 8 weeks. What has been noticeable, is the widespread feeding activity. ! The fish can be found absolutely everywhere on these two waters. There was much talk pre-season at Rutland that with the low winter water levels, rapidly filled in the early spring, would have killed off buzzer beds around the shores, thus sending fish from the shores packing ! In fact, it has been the complete opposite. The fish just won't, as of now, leave the margins. Normanton, Berrybuts, Green Bank, Dickinsons Bay, Sailing Club, Yellow...

Rutland, however you may look at it, is a huge vast amount of water, and get it wrong and it can seem a lonely place at times. Early season stock fish are released in the same areas year in, year out, and this only starts to vary, once the water levels drop, and access becomes a problem, therefore you can get the odds heavily on your side from the off, if you know where to look ! I am about to tell you where ! We set our first drift, 80yds just off the left of the mouth of Whitwell...

The days of 30 fish + to the boat are fast diminishing, as normal reservoir fishing resumes at our biggest waters. The pre-season stocks are now well spread out across the water, and added stocks, with the warmer water in the margins are now, in most cases, moving right out into deeper water.  The fish are now feeding naturally on the abundant food sources, buzzers, shrimp, daphnia, pin fry, snails etc. There is a lot here for the fish to feed on, so the pulling of lures is naturally less effective, as a more natural fly approach is needed to...

It has been a busy week taking anglers onto the Midland's top waters, Rutland & Grafham, and with them both in fantastic form of late, was it going to continue? First trip out was with Scotland's Ramsay Mgowan and Tyler Hay. After a "night before" catch up it was time to show these boys the big "R". We headed South, and parked up along the fence at Gibbets Gorse, where I new fish had been holding for some weeks. It wasn't long until both Tyler and Ramsay hit into fish, fishing buzzers on floating lines. The fish were noticeably close...