Boat Match at Rutland 14th June 2008

The weather was good for fishing, not the hot day that might be expected for flaming June. It started off mainly sunny with the occasional big cloud which caused the wind direction to change by 90 degrees to come from the west instead of north. However, around lunchtime a heavy sky came from the west, the wind crept up, it became chilly and rained for a brief spell. It then settled down and there was nearly 100% cloud cover and a steady wind N to NW – good for fishing. See below what this change of weather did!!

The boat numbers were disappointing but unfortunately people will go on holiday or fish in other matches (eg. Mick was in the USA and Danny in Scotland).

The 4 boats kicked off at 9am (end was 5pm). Three headed east along the southern bank whilst Ray and Eddie (nice to see Eddie re-surfacing) headed for the north arm and so disappeared for about 5 hours.

At 10am those of us who were on the southern bank were very gloomy. Although Allen had caught one fish the other five had blanked, using all sorts of methods. The outlook was not good and we suspected that there might be a few blanks. The odd fish did come but it was very hard.

Meanwhile Ray and Eddie in the north arm were also struggling although they had caught a few, Ray catching the best fish of the day, - a beautiful 4lb full finned fish.

At about noon that heavy cloud and rain reached us and suddenly everything changed. It was just as if a switch had been turned. As Eddie said, the fish came up and we could catch them. Ken jumped into the action catching 3 fish on one drift.

Ray and Eddie came over and joined us on the southern bank and immediately found fish.

Most people were hitting fish but they would not stay on.

By 3pm Allen had 6 fish and John had 3. John then had the midas touch and caught 4 fish to Allen’s zero for John to win the day with Allen second.

Well done John.

It was also nice to see our new member Ralph, new to fly fishng in a boat.

Commiserations go to Martin. He tried everything in the book, HiDis, floating lines, boobys, big flies, small flies but nothing held. He (and Stan) even had a rudder to try a different sort of fishing for a while. Better luck next time.    

 

 

Name

Number

Weight

Best Rainbow

No Browns were caught

Stan King

5

10lbs   3ozs

 

 

Martin Tinald

0

 

 

 

Ken Williams

4

  9lbs   7ozs

 

 

Ralph Bullock

3

  7lbs   0ozs

 

 

Ray Simpson

4

10lbs 12ozs

4lbs 0 ozs

 

Eddie Gray

4

  8lbs   6ozs

 

 

John Weaver

7

15lbs   9ozs

 

 

Allen Dixon

6

13lbs   6ozs