Seasonality?

The weather cleared on Monday with high pressure and perfect cloudless skies. I waited till about 9 before walking over to the river, in autumn and winter I like to let the sun (and hopefully the temperature) get up a bit before I head out so that I get the best light of the day. There's the added bonus of not having to get up early too. I headed for some of the slower deeper areas expecting to find most of the fish there after the cold weather, tied on a worm pattern and started looking for fish. The water was a bit dirty, but clearer than expected given the rain. There was enough colour that I was looking for bubble lanes in few spots and lost one fish. I'm not a huge fan of targeting fish from their bubble lanes, it's impossible to see the eat most of the time and because by the time you feel the eat and try to set the hook the fish is probably already ejecting the fly, foul hooking can be a problem. I wasn't seeing huge numbers anyway so decided to head upstream to see what I could find.

On the walk up I had a couple of refusals in shallower water so switched to a lighter, buggier fly. By half ten I had taken my jacket off and started seeing fish mooching under banside vegetation or pushed right up in the shallows, back's out of the water as they rooted around in the silt. I promptly spooked a couple of high percentage fish so decided to change things up. I sat down, tied a new leader replacing 12' with an 18'leader tapered to 16lb - I generally find going longer makes more difference than going lighter when it comes to carp. I kept it simple on the fly front with a standard, unweighted woolly worm. I tied it on, stood up, saw a fish actively feeding and circling under a bush, when I put the fly in I was rewarded with an aggressive eat. Perfect. I was surprised as I don't usually see that kind of behaviour this late in the year, but there were loads of fish at it as I went upstream to the skinny water. I had an amazing couple of hours before the light went with 15 or 16 fish to about 8lb. The shots had to be close to the fish-as close as you would dare or dragged & dropped if possible. All of the eats were fully committed and agressive and very exciting. It was more like early summer fishing than what I should be etting in mid-October and thoroughly enjoyable.