Determined not to blank again on the river I set out wading with a two two rod system. One rod was a 9ft 6wt set up with a team of 3 nymphs & the other an 8ft 4wt for throwing little dries at any Trout fool hardy enough to rise!
The fish only started to rise in the twilight.
Working in Preston yesterday afternoon gave me the opportunity to hop up the M6 towards the Lakes & search out some new water. On getting to the water it started raining & there was an intermittently gusting Westerly. Some fish were fin & tailing while feeding just below the surface so I opted to fish with buzzer & Diawl Bachs. After several swirls & plucks at the flies a fish took and just shot off pinging strait through the leader, not what I was expecting from a tarn trout. I stepped up to a 4lb leader & hooked up with a powerful fish that shot off on several huge runs, just as I though I was taming it & bringing it in on the reel, it shot off again & as the reel span the handle hit my thumb stalling it & allowing the fish snap clean through the line.
I wanted to put my mid week blank behind me this weekend & put a bend in my rod from some fat stockies so with that I headed up to a Res in the moors above Bolton. The weather was atrocious, it pissed it down & blew a gale. The fishing was tricky & made even more difficult, as you can see from the picture, the water is heavily wooded and the only places to get a decent cast out meant you had the wind gusting in your face.
Here's a chunky Blue Trout that has just been filleted & pan fried in butter.
Just spent a few hours wading the river & ended up catching sweet F.A. This is pretty much unheard of on the stretches I fish at this time of year. Fair enough the conditions were not brilliant, there was a strong cold wind, nothing was really hatching & the bites I eeked out I managed to miss. I am starting to think that fish numbers are well down this season & it's not just my bad timing & technique. Mike (manchester fishing fiend) has reported similar findings on his blog & heard stories of people meat fishing the area. Wild Trout poulations are delicate enough especially with the pressures of Mink, Goosanders, pollution & gypos meat fishing... you can trap Mink & shoot Goosanders but, how you gonna get across the notion of catch & release to some scrote raised on findus crispy pancakes!
Just spent a fantastic couple of weeks travelling round some of the islands in the south of Thailand. 
The angling bug got the better of me though & after several Singhas & Sangsom buckets I got chatting to a Mr Sak who promised me a 80-90% chance of landing a Sailfish!
Here's Mr Sak skippering his Longtail boat - basically a long wooden skiff with a dirty diesel engine attached to the back, powering a propellor at the end of a long shaft... genius!
First off, we jigged some feathers for the live bait.
