RH Fly Fishing

    The Fly Dressers Guild’s 45 th John Watts Competition at Draycote Water brought together Fluff Boys from ten branches; our particular branch being represented by the Professor, the Admiral, the Inspector and Whytee, travelling to the venue separately in keeping with Coronavirus best practice. I used mission control’s car, as mine is undergoing surgery presently, and the lack of sat-nav meant following an old-fashioned paper route, adding an extra twelve miles and nearly twenty minutes due to two wrong turns, but I’m blaming substandard roundabout signage, not my driving. It was just nine degrees C when I arrived, and it turned out to be the coldest August day since records began, the cold wind from the north pushing white horses along the water.   Following the briefing from our Gen Sec I found my boat partner for the day, one MR from the Ringwood branch, we made our way onto the lurching boat dock where we were allocated boat number 13. “That’s cancelled out my we...

  “Angling is extremely time-consuming; that’s sort of the whole point”. - Thomas McGuane   Over breakfast, I looked at two weather forecasts on my iPad: the BBC’s and the Met Office one. The former showed an overcast day, but no rain, while t’other stated rain all day. During the six something hours I was at Holbury Lane Lakes (last in March this year, pre-lockdown), we had three heavy showers. My barometer app has been pogo dancing lately, something to do with Storm Ellen and the forthcoming Storm Francis, so it was anyone’s guess how the fishing might be.   As it turns out, the answer was ‘tough’, which we didn’t know as we rigged-up for the fray. Foggy was present, with his pal again, the Inspector accompanied by one son, also Rodney, Threepio, the Professor, Lumberjack (returned to the fold), Whytee of course, and Dodgy Phil pitched up too. Georgee thought all ten were from the Fluff Club, which I suppose gave us a bit of kudos. There were other anglers as well...