Went over to the Dee for the first time this year, the river had finally fallen to a nice level, the river was also quite clear, so it was time to see if I could find a willing trout.

There was one tiny fly in the ointment, which was the wind, it is blowing a down stream gale, at least it is quite warm. As I’m after trout, I tackled up with some size 16 nymphs and fish a short line, so I could detect takes in the windy conditions.

Down to the first run, one that had fished very well for grayling the end of last summer, starting at the top of the run it is quite shallow, flicking the nymphs up stream and watching the line come back towards me it was going to be difficult to detect takes in the wind, after about ten casts, this take wasn’t hard to detect at all, a great big thump! Here we go, a fish, and good fish as well, but no trout, it was a out of season grayling, a very nice fish of around 2lbs,as I worked my way down the run, all seemed very quite, I wondered if I was missing takes, so I though I would put a sight indicator on the leader (I don’t use them very often these days, but on days like this they can work a teat ) towards the end of the run the river bed dives down in to a deep hole, as the nymphs went over the lip and into deeper water the indicator very slowly dipped under, a lift of the rod tip and a very strange sensation, it feels like I’m stuck on the river bed, but the line is moving very slowly up stream, no feeling of a fish, very strange! Then a good solid kick can be felt, there is a fish on, as hard as I tried the fish would not come to me, then I could see the point fly in its mouth and the dropper fly had caught him in the dorsal fin and yes it was another grayling, bigger than the last one, so the fish was coming in side wards, finally the fly in the dorsal came out and I had a little more control and the fish was landed and released back to the water.

The wind got worse and worse as the day went on, several more little grayling came to the net, but not a single trout, a bit of a shame really, but what a day, I think it might have been better by the fire at home!