International

Hi

Last week was the Youth fly fishing international. As we arrived on the Saturday to start our practice it was clear that the weather we were going to experience was not the usual scotish weather.

After the first day of practice we had identified 3 main areas: Gate side bay, reedy bay, and international bay. All of these had produced fish mainly to the washing line method.

As the week progressed we gain more and more information on the areas and what methods was best. And by Tuesday we had established out game plan. This was to fish in gateside bay or reedy bay with straight lined nymphs on a floater or washing line on a midge tip, with a few of us deciding to fish Billys method in the flat conditions  with our best flies being green Nemos, pearly Nemos and red Diwal Backs with a few lures including Wooftas and biscuit flies.

On match day it was clear that each team had different approaches and it was going to be interesting to see who came out on top.

After a hard days fishing it was clear that the fish had dropped even further in the water and that the fish had to be caught early to stand a chance of the win.

At the weigh in it was clear that we had not done well with 2-3 fish being average and that the Scots had won with them averaging 4-5 fish.

They fished nymphs on Di5 lines to get there fish and got nearly all there fish before 11 o'clock.

The final scores were:
Scotland 68 fish
Wales 48 fish
England 41 fish
Ireland 26 fish

Despite a disappointing result it was a privilege to spend a week with some awesome people, and a massive well done has to go to the Scots for the gold medal.

I would also like to say thanks to all the people that helped us to compete in this great competition. And A special thanks goes to Phil Longstaff our manager and Carl Nixon our coach for staying up all night tying flies and doing all they could to help us do well. I would also ;like to Thanks Carl Malpass for coming up and helping as well. Thanks Boys 

Airflo Northern final

Yesterday was the Northern final of the Anglian water Airflo international at Rutland water. We travelled down on Sunday the 10th for a practice to see where the fish were holding and what methods were  working best. This proved to be invaluable as the fishing was extremely tough. Unfortunately we didn't find any particular areas that were holding fish but we did find fish and I also found that Woofta's and sunburst blobs were the top flies.

On match day it was very similar to practice with fish hard to come by, this was probably due to no cloud and near flat calm conditions. So i decided to fish a DI7 40+ line with Tequila blob and Wootfa booby. Unfortunately I didn't get my first fish till 2.30 out of Manton bay. So we decided to move to old hall. This proved to be the best move of the day as within 2 drifts I had caught my limit with 8 fish by 4.30. This turned out to be 1 of only 2 limits caught all day and claimed 3rd overall for me because I was narrowly beaten by Peter Appelby with 5 big fish to my 8 smaller fish. But it did mean that the team qualified for the international Final in October. So it was an extremely good day.