I have been travelling around, making a recording for Angling Heritage and buying old tackle for the River Reads site, but managed a few hours fishing on the Wye staying at Brobury House thanks to the hospitality of the friends, the Cartwrights.
With the coarse fishing close season still in force, it gave me a chance to trty fly fishing, and so I started dry fly fishing just above the bridge on the Brobury side using my favourite Hardy CC de France cane fly rod. The blue winged olive produced nothing so changed to a parachute fly and started taking chublets under the cover of the trees, plus a salmon parr.
After catching 8 or 9 the canoe traffic became too great coupled with swimmers and kids throwing stones into the river so I stopped for a siesta, returning at 7pm
At &, everything had disappeared so I had the chance to fish below the bridge catching another chublet. There were one or two mayfly showing so changing fly, I noticed a gentle take in mid river and amazingly for my casting skills, covered it first time and was into a beauty of a brown trout which tore off taking line and leaping from the water. After a brief but spectacular fight, I managed to lift if from the water to take this picture before returning it. It was a great wildie of around 2.5lbs, my best wild trout on a fly, and at that point I thought it would be a great end to the day so I sat and watched the river for a few minutes before heading back for tea.
Does life get any better than that.