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Bob Sharp and others on Ravensthorpe

Bob Sharp fished Ravensthorpe with two friends on Thursday, 28th March 2019 and had a very successful day.

The fishing in the morning started very slowly so they moved to the middle of the reservoir into the deeper water. There they found feeding fish and started catching on size 12 & 14 black buzzers, fished as a team of three on a floating line and a 6m leader.

In three hours Bob had 8 rainbows with the best being about 10lb, together with fish of 6lb and 5lb for a grand [...]

April 3rd, 2019|

Speaker Evening – Richard Ellis

Richard Ellis was the Guest Speaker on 21st March 2019. He is the Fly Tying Awards and Fly Tying Competition Secretary for the Fly Dressers’ Guild and the Treasurer of the Thames Valley Branch of the Fly Dressers’ Guild.

Richard tied six nymph patterns for still waters and rivers together with three dry fly patterns and an emerger pattern.
The nymph patterns included a buzzer tied with black wire, a variant of the Hare’s Ear nymph aimed at grayling, a variant of the Pheasant tail nymph, a so called “bottom [...]

April 2nd, 2019|

Speaker Evening – Tom Bird

Tom Bird was the Guest Speaker on 7th February 2019. Tom is a member of the England Squad and the Five Nations Team and is a Ranger and Fishery Guide at Draycote Water.

Tom’s passion is fishing the dry fly on still waters and he has gained considerable experience and respect for his demonstrable skill at this aspect of fly fishing and also based on the Dry Fly Fishing Master Classes he has given at Draycote.

The first half of Tom’s presentation included all aspects of dry fly tactics on still [...]

February 8th, 2019|

Speaker Evening – Lindsay Simpson

Lindsay Simpson was the Guest Speaker on 17th January 2019. The evening commenced with a short video of his visit to Norway last year to experience the superb grayling fishing that is available.

Lindsay started by tying two grayling flies; one described as a sacrificial tag fly with a 1 gram jig back for use as the point fly and the other as a grayling nymph fished on a dropper.

These were followed by still water and reservoir patterns. Lindsay tied his version of the Grafham killer shrimp which is based [...]

January 18th, 2019|

Christmas Special 2018 – Clive Collier

Clive Collier was once again the Guest Speaker at the Christmas Special evening. The main focus of his presentation was grayling flies particularly in the context of the Hanak European Grayling Festival held on the River Dee in November of 2018. Clive demonstrated the use of Edgebrite in the tying of a grayling hare’s ear pattern with which he has had success. He also tied a Perdigon pattern which has been successful on the welsh River Dee at Llangollen followed by a Squirmy Wormy pattern tied to international rules.

Clive [...]

December 14th, 2018|

Speaker Evening – Caroline Emmet

The Guest Speaker on 22nd November 2018 was Caroline Emmet. Caroline is an Editor of the Fly Dresser, the journal of the Fly Dressers’ Guild which is published quarterly.

Caroline tied a number of flies, predominantly emergers based on the use of peccary quills, CDC and Elk hair. The peccary quill is a thick quill sourced from the Peccary, a small pig-like hoofed mammal with stiff quills that have alternate black/dark and cream segments. When tied as a body, a single quill creates dark and cream coloured sections reminiscent of [...]

November 23rd, 2018|

Bob Sharp’s 2018 River Report

Bob Sharp, Martin James and occasionally Keith Allison went river fishing from April through September 2018. This is Bob’s report of their experiences.

This summer’s weather has dictated the quality of the river fishing in the south of England. We have experienced floods, low water and lots of combinations in between. We delayed starting fishing until nearly the end of April, only to find the River Avon in flood! This was followed later in the year by very hot weather with open, bright blue skies which adversely affected the fishing.

Martin [...]

November 20th, 2018|

Wherwell Weekend 2018

November 18th, 2018|

Speaker Evening – Chris Skillen 2018

Chris Skillen returned as a Guest Speaker following on from his previous presentation in November 2017.

The theme for the evening was fly tying techniques and their demonstration on specific fly patterns – particularly detached body daddy, crippled midge (loop hackle and parachute) and deer hair sedge.

Chris showed a range of deer hair skins to illustrate the variety of deer hair that exists and some of the particular fly tying properties associated with them. He then demonstrated a technique for tying the detached body for the daddy using deer hair [...]

October 19th, 2018|

A Grand Day Out on Draycote Water

Keith Allison and Stuart Foulds, after hearing about John Goldie’s and John Poote’s spectacular session at Draycote Water the previous week, decided to try their luck on Wednesday, 8th August.

The previous day’s fishing log showed the fishing to be very difficult with numerous single fish or nil returns. So with some trepidation, they set off to Rainbow corner. The weather forecast for the day looked good – overcast sky and moderate south westerly wind. Initially the boat was anchored in Rainbow Corner followed by drifting to A buoy. With [...]

August 14th, 2018|