There’s a fishing club in Yorkshire I’ve been wanting to join for years but the waiting list is as long as your rod. However, through a series of sabotaged brake pipes/threatening phone calls/bribes I’ve managed to work my way to the top of that list and this year was proposed and seconded for membership. It’s the most expensive fishing club I’ve ever joined (at a time when I should be cutting back on all such frivolous spending!) but it gives me access to some bits of the Wharfe that hold fond memories for me…along with a good head of grayling and brown trout.
I was straight away invited to a flytying day being in Otley held by my new club which I agreed to attend before realising it was a 10:30 start on a Sunday morning – a time normally reserved for bacon sarnies, coffee and the Sunday Times on my sofa. Nevertheless I made it there only slightly late and discovered a very good turn out and some flytying demos underway.
You may recognise some faces in the crowd, it’s fair to say there are some very skilled fluff turners in my new club and I am very keen to Hoover up any knowledge I can.
It’s months since I tied anything, and even then I bet it will have been a bloody pike fly so I was quite pleased that I managed to produce some flies which weren’t a million miles away from the demo patterns we were shown. The Mayfly pattern was particularly involved, requiring the detached body to be built separately around a sewing needle before marrying up with the main fly. I look forward to losing it in a tree first cast!
The other 2 are a (damp?) Grannom pattern and a CDC Humpty type fly. Speaking of Grannom, when I used to fish this bit of the Wharfe there used to be spectacular hatches of them and I can tell you there was one on 19/04/2003 because I took some pictures of a load of the little blighters on my waders with my first ever digital camera on that day!!
This year I may struggle to find time to do much fishing but when I do it’s likely to be on the river so it should make a change to all the stillwater lake / loch angling I tend to do these days. One way or another though, I will still have to wind my way up to the North West Highlands this year for my usual fill of wilderness, wild Browns and w..w…whisky.
Time spent fishing does not count towards your lifespan.
This is aspecially true in Assynt.