Fish Cakes

Saturday started well with no breeze and high cloud but the forecast was for a rising westerly wind with showers; and so it turned out. But this was my first opportunity in many weeks for a spot of fly fishing and I was determined to go anyway.

Fishcakes.

Grafham Water, like all good reservoirs, is at the top of a hill. It is one of the best inland sailing waters in the country because it is big and because it gets plenty of wind; sometimes too much. I watched a huge flotilla of racing dinghies scud across the far side of the reservoir. The faster boats were kicking up spray and sometimes getting air beneath their keels. They rounded a marker buoy and set off downwind, which is always tricky, but on a squally day even more so. All boats have the mast set forward which helps on all the points of sailing except running before the wind. As the wind blows down on the sail from behind it tends to push the nose of the boat down, so the crew has to move back. If the wind is strong you need a heavy crew, sitting as far back as possible. If the wind gusts even more you can only hang on and hope that the nose doesn't dip under a wave. The result can be a complete somersault but more often the nose goes down, the boat swings across the wind and the sail gets pushed flat onto the water. It's called capsizing. I saw about a dozen boats go over in one squall.

Raw fish-cakes.

In conditions like these you fish from a sheltered bank but repeated casting of a fly rod in half a gale is exhausting and the rain does not make it any more pleasant. I was all for giving up a couple of times, but then the sun would come out and cheer me up, even though I was not getting any interest from the trout.

This is fry-bashing season and the presence of large numbers of fish-fry around the harbour wall gave me hope. At some point a trout was bound to come and have a look. I pulled a rabbit hair fry imitation close to the bank inside the harbour itself and almost fell off my slippery rock as the line was pulled out of my hands and then off the reel. I wound the fish in a few times, only for it to take off again, but eventually it was netted, dispatched and put in my bag. It would make some good fish-cakes later.

Big Brown.

It took another hour for me to stir a fish. This one took right at my feet on the windy side of the wall where the water was made cloudy by the waves. It felt very unlike a trout as it just grabbed the fly and set off along the bottom, round the boom and into the harbour. I thought it might be a pike but it was a very large brown trout. I landed it carefully as "brownies" have to be returned to the water at this time of year. It had a huge head with sharp teeth, but no kype (hooked jaw) like the males get, so I assume it was a female. She was absolutely perfect, with beautiful leopard-spots all over.

Apart from the physical effort of fishing, just facing elements had worn me out and I was quite glad to knock-off early and head home. The only problem was that I had forgotten my house key and had to kick my heels for an hour until the family came home.