We'll be back!

 

 I don’t want to bang on about it BUT the Wild Trout Trust annual auction is the best way to fish new places whilst raising funds for a very worthy cause, dear to all of our hearts. This particular auction lot was carried over from last year due to the C-19 malediction. 

Unhappily, this unprecedented May weather meant the river beats were blown-out, running the colour of chocolate. Thankfully, the Leconfield Fly Fishing Club has much more to offer: we could switch attention to their ‘lakes’ and fish for either Brown or Rainbow trout. I hasten to point out this Leconfield is not in Yorkshire, but is the Leconfield Estate, 14.000 beautiful acres thereof, around Petworth in the South Downs.

 My fishing buddy and I enjoyed a thoroughly good day. After the rendezvous with Andrew Thompson we followed him, almost off-road, into a beautiful, narrow valley which once used to be the site of water mills, the tumbling burn being dammed to form mill ponds. The top two are now a Brown Trout fishery, strictly C&R, with wild and stocked fish. Nestled in this little vale we were sheltered from the wind’s worst, but May’s deluges had turned the water brown so no fish to be seen. We gave it our best for a couple of hours without troubling any of the residents, until AT returned to take us four miles or so to another set of ‘lakes’.

 The Rainbows ‘lakes’, also C&R at present, were of a much bigger scale, again impoundments descending a small valley; I think there were four or five in all, although we decided to concentrate on the larger, first two.

 Clad in waterproofs, the rain wasn’t a concern to us, but the Gulf Stream’s raging winds blew from all directions, at times like ‘air-bombs’ which smashed down onto the water’s surface, spinning away in all directions at once, marvellous to behold even though casting became hopeless; you had to wait for a pause in the onslaught. The Swifts, hundreds of them, dealt with the turbulence as though it didn’t exist, zooming and hawking all around us, picking-off struggling Olives and dark-tan Mayflies as they tried to get aloft. Not really a ‘hatch’, more an intermittent trickle.

 The Club has a first class hut here, but we took our lunch at a picnic table outside, as two chaps were already ensconced. Social distancing, don’t you know.

 We both enjoyed good sport, returning several fighting-fit Rainbows between 1.5 and 2 pounds, although bigger ones up to doubles are present. I was especially pleased to get one on a Mayfly Emerger pattern of my own devising, although all our others came to lures fished sub-surface. The trees were being smashed and shaken by the wind, dislodging lots of 15mm bright green inchworm thingies, many clinging to our table, waterproofs and cars with abandon; sadly, I didn’t have anything to ‘match the hatch’!

 Fantastic. That’s the best word to describe the Leconfield Club’s fishery, the surroundings, our day there, AND all the fishing opportunities available courtesy of the WTT auctions. Try it … next Spring!

[n.b. I'm still posting free stock photos, still haven't resolved the dead field camera issue yet]