Again armed with my three weight and floating line I set off, this time to the local canal. The target species today was to be roach or rudd.....to be honest I would have settled for not blanking. I started with the same fly (balloon caddis) that I used last time out. This is quite a bulky fly and I think it may have been a bit too much for the smaller mouthed fish that I was aiming for. After a fruitless half hour or so, I decided to change fly. I switched over to a small cdc fly that I had again tied myself.
This fly brought an immediate change in fortunes, within a couple of casts a small rudd came to have a look and promptly snaffled the smaller more subtle fly.
Another new species ticked of the "fly" list. The fly went out again and within another couple of casts another similar sized fish fell for it. This time a roach.
Now, dont get me wrong these are not monster fish, but I was really pleased to be catching on my light fly outfit and although you couldnt say that they put up much of a scrap they did put a pleasing hoop in the light rod. Bites were coming thick and fast all from roach and rudd of about 4 to 6oz with over a dozen gracing the bank. I was really enjoying just catching steadily on the dry fly, and after all you cant beat "enjoy". In the past I have become a little bogged down with catching larger fish, so much so that at times it had become more of a chore than pleasure. This was back to fishing purely for fun.
Unfortunately this spell only lasted for about an hour before the wind picked up and made keeping the fly static all but impossible. I was now struggling to cast and though you cant tell from the pictures things had become rather blustery. I only had an hour or so of fishing time left before I had to head back home for child minding duty. The Clash song sprung to mind "should I stay or should I go". I decided to stay, but swap over to a sinking fly. I quickly tied on a small pink bug with a red glass bead for a head, again tied by yours truly.
It would be interesting to see if the fish were as keen on the sinking fly as they were in the dry fly.
I needn't have worried after switching to the little pink bug sport was hectic with shoals of small roach and rudd racing towards the fly. It was just a matter of watching the fly slowly drop through the clear water and then strike when it disappeared into the fishes mouths.
I lost count of the number of fish that I caught, all were very similar in size the only difference being roach or rudd.
I did spot a couple of large bream cruising by and dropped the fly in front of them, but they showed no interest at all.......there is always next time.
So after just a couple of hours I had gained loads of confidence in catching coarse species on the fly, it was really effective and made for some terrific sport, with plenty of fish caught and quite a few missed. Some of the rudd were really engulfing the fly....I will have to tie up a few more of the little pinks. I really enjoyed my couple of hours down the cut, and will definitely be back for more, at first I thought the wind had ruined things but the enforced switch over to the bug actually improved my catch rate. So thats chub, dace, roach and rudd ticked of the "fly coarse list" in just a couple of sessions.......hmmm what next?
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