River test fishing report

[casts_by_fly]

Hi guys and gals,

 

Thought I'd drop a quick note. I got to fish the Test on Saturday for grayling. We shared two beats for the 5 of us and had a ball. The weeds were still pretty heavy, but that concentrated the fish on the gravel that was exposed. My wife and I caught 3 dozen combined. She had the big fish with three 18" browns and an 18+" grayling. I got a grayling of the same length but thicker and a nice brown of ~17". All the rest of the fish were 11-14" except two 6" fish. Only one small grayling was on a dry fly (parachute adams), all the rest were on nymphs of one sort or another. Plenty of bugs about and lots of fish taking emergers. All in all a really nice day to be out.

 

Thanks,

Rick

[Dunkield]

Rick,

Good fishing well done sounds a great day out.

Every year we talk about doing this and never do, so can please tell me more if you wouldn't mind?

Where did you go and how much did it cost?

 

My mate has just bought a house no more than 2-300 yards from the Test

[casts_by_fly]

Hi Stuart,

 

We were around the town of Wherewell. It was a smaller place, didn't have a whole lot of water that they owned. They have two beats, 2 rods per beat normally (we booked 5 rods) and for grayling it runs £35 per rod. It is a word of mouth kinda place as they don't advertise. There are others around also that will sell day tickets. There is also a free (public) section further downriver.

 

The fishing that we did was indicator nymphing and sight nymphing to visible fish. That's how I prefer to fish and that made it a lot easier on Rachel who doesn't fish much. Some runs I took the indicator off, and some of it could have been fished well with dries or emergers in the film. The stream where we were was 40-70' wide and 2-6' deep with pretty even flows across.

 

It made for a nice day and something different from what I have been used to fly fishing.

 

Thanks

Rick