Tracy&James | Wednesday, 27 August 2025
Nick came to visit last weekend for a bit of casting and some fishing. Actually as it turned out it was a lot of casting, on a very hot day, and a short fishing session. Given the weather and the low level of the river we didn't feel it was worth rushing out, however we probably left it a bit later than we should have and only had two and a half hours on the bank.
Nick was keen to improve his overhead distance with the double handed outfits that are cast at the BFCC, namely the S55 and T120. He was slightly wary of these as he had got into the habit of clipping himself with the line on the delivery cast – this can hurt a bit, especially with the T120. What was immediately apparent to me as an observer was that it was the dangling end (BDB) that was clipping Nick, and the more he tried to keep the line away from himself the worse things got. The root cause being the (more) sideways orientation of the loop and the resultant dangling end forming in the same plane which would then hit him. So the solution was a fairly easy one – in order to stop hitting himself he needed to bring the casting plane closer in. We also worked on getting a sharper backcast so that less of a dangling end formed in the first place. With Nick knowing what he's doing as far as casting goes, these changes were very quickly implemented and great loops and no slaps were the the norm for the rest of the session with that outfit.
We then moved on to some back to back tests with the Celestial lines that I wrote about last week and a couple of different rod options – my usual TCX #10 and Nick's Igniter #9. Unlike the line testing the previous week, there was no consistent winner between the two rods. I think it was more of a test of who got a lucky puff of breeze on an otherwise still day. It was fun, but often frustrating – seeing cast after cast crash and burn around the 110ft mark and then one would go 120ft plus. So I don't think we really learnt anything other than to try and get lucky when faced with similar conditions.
The fishing was equally frustrating for me. I went a bit further upstream than the others and found some decent fish rising at the back end of a glide, just before the water broke up into a riffle. I'd tied on a sedge pattern, which is pretty much my go to fly when fishing on the river on a summer’s evening. The particular fly I selected was perhaps a little large (though I did see some sedge fluttering by that would have been a good match), knowing that it would be easier to see as the light faded – it was our intention to fish until it was dark. Initially the only interest I had was a couple of small fish slashing at it, however as the evening progressed some bigger fish started rising more confidently. Presenting the fly directly upstream to one of the rise-forms I got a perfect take – unfortunately by this time I had lost all feeling in my hand and promptly bust off on the strike. I hate losing fish like this and I'm going to have to have a re-think about what I'm doing – perhaps I need to get a much softer rod to compensate for my clumsiness? I was pretty dejected as I retied the fly as this was the second trip in succession where my hand injury had caused me an issue, having had an identical break-off when fishing the river Wye. Knowing that the feeling in my hand was not going to recover that evening, I went to find Tracy to give her my outfit and suggest that she fished where I was.
Nick found the fishing tough also, although he did manage a grayling. He did report seeing a large sea-trout jump in the pool he was fishing but that was it as far as the excitement went. We retired home and drank wine.
Hope you're having a great week,
James.