A Day On The Ribble

Time on the river is always special , even more so for me
when the river is the Ribble . I have spent so much of my
time from being a young lad both fishing and learning by
her side .
Even though I'm a little older every time a trip is planed
I'm filled with a child like excitement , I find it hard to
sleep the night before an early start , unlike a work day
getting out of bed is so easy.
Mike was picking me up at 8am I was up and ready by
7am and found my self watching ''Essential skills'' with
Oliver Edwards .
Mike arrived with Adam , who is a member of the Hungarian
Fly Fishing Team so I was looking forward to the day .


I have been having a lot of fish on Caddis , so I decided to
fish this from the start , the river was up and tinged with
colour so this was ideal , I put a Sparkle Bug on the dropper
and was quite confident .
After watching Adam and Mike fish the first glide I walked
a little downstream , a bolder 8m from the bank caught my
eye and I dropped into the water and fished down past it .
First run and a fish hit without me making contact , this
continued very annoying but at the same time encouraging .
Mike and Adam had little luck and moved on down stream,
I stuck to fishing down river as far as I could on the same glide.
Finally my persistence payed off a little hand sized Brownie ,
these were probably responsible for all the small pulls and
bumps I was missing , although I had bumped a decent fish
which tore off before the hook pulled.
Another small Brownie followed before the line tightened
into a better fish a nice buttery Brown trout around 11in

While fishing I had noticed a few flies of several kinds one
or two fish spasmodically rose but one fish seemed to be
rising regularly enough to target I tied on a small F-fly
and was soon playing a nice fish , it turned out to be a
Grayling .

After a brief walk I found Adam he had now caught a couple
of Brownies and was enjoying the day . A little further down
steam Mike was getting a few takes and as I had a drink he
took his first fish only small but he was pleased.

I then had another little Grayling and a similar sized Trout
before a return to frustration !
The next fish was a good one only problem the hook pulled
after a minute , this was followed by a few more good bangs
but no hook ups .
Adam and I walked back we had both had a few fish we found
Mike who pointed out a rising fish, on went the F-fly and
moments later I was into a good Grayling , it was on a while
but my skill and the angling gods let me down with another
hook pull .
We had a good day on a river I love , a lost fish is not the end
of the world if you are losing the odd one you are doing
something rite and if anything it makes you want more.