Ever since i have been a member of the Derby Railway angling club i have allways wanted to fish this water. when i woke up on saturday morning the
sun was shining but the air was cold. it was a 2 hour drive to darely daleso we set off quite early. After a fair few mishaps in my directions we eventually reached the river. We decided that first we would scout the river just to see what it was like. The first piece of riveri came to was extremely slow and very high banks it was almost a canal! luckily we walked on and it slowly starteed improving until it was a great looking river i was very excited by this point and couldnt wait to get fishing. As we walked back to the car i was deciding what i was goin to fish with. i had decided my setup would be: 10ft 4wt with french leader and double nymph. i also set up another rod with single dry fly; a size 18 stu's olive.when we reached the car we were met by another angler called graham. He was having a days trotting for the grayling. He gave me some usefull tips on where to fish and there feeding habits. I quickly tackled up and walked back down to the piece of river where we had decided i would start. I carefully waded in and starte casting my french leader. It took me about 10 minutes to get into the swing of things and at that point i had my first fish a lovely out of season brownie. After this i kept on walking and kept on catching more and more fish. it allways seems to happen that when your fishing for grayling you catch brown trout and visa versa. my first 4 fish were brownies all of a reasonable size eventually i had a tiny Grayling! and after that
the grayling started catching up with the trouti had 3 more grayling after this and then the sun came out and there was a brillaint hatch. I picked up my dry fly rod and started casting to rising fish. i had one grayling and got snapped off by something else of a very good size. the hatch was only brief and i soon moved on. We stopped at the next piece of fsihy looking water and i carefully waded into the river. first cast with the french leader was a lovely grayling, i kept casting and moving and before i knew it i had 15 fish 7 trout and 8 grayling all of a decent size. i reached a fast run which looked very fishy and the first cast in that run produced by best brownie of the day i think it was the most beautifull brown trout i have ever caught. i kept casting and moving up thi
s run and almost every other cast was a fish or a take i had lots of fish out of this run but the two must memorable were the 2 big grayling that both made big runs downstream screaming line of my reel. after this run i had had 25 fish. I figured that i would stop using french leader and fish a bit more of an exciting technique so i started of fishing my single dry again. first cast i had a nice little grayling and then once agian snapped of by a nice fish. i changed my tipet to something a little stronger i setup frishing duo with a klinkhammer and a small pink head hares ear a few feet beneath it. i just stood in the dmiddle of the river and fan cast all around me once again picking up nice grayling and the odd brownie. i got to the end of this stretch and i had had about 35+ fish i said to my dad (who had bought me to this wonderfull river) that i would stop fishing after the next fish... next cast i was into a nice grayling. a brillaint end to a perfect day.
