Stuart Foulds and Keith Allison had an interesting day fishing from the boat at Grafham. Having kept a close eye on the weather with thunder storms being a daily occurrence over the last few days, the weather was forecast as a misty start to the day and 11 -12 mph north easterly wind. How wrong was this!  Boats were not allowed out first thing due to fog and it was very breezy! We retired to the restaurant for refreshments and eventually headed out at 9:30 am.

We decided to get up to the north shore or so we thought. Keith netted his first “catch” of the day as Stuart’s cap flew off in the “breeze” and ended up in the water within the first 5 minutes of departing from the jetty. This put us off course and after 10 minutes in almost zero visibility we ended up back near the jetty, have turned a full 180 degrees. The dense fog really made it a strange and somewhat confusing experience. Next time we must take a compass!

We set up with floating lines and washing line with point fly and two droppers, and eventually the first casts were made in Sanctuary Bay at 10:00am. The advice given from the lodge was to drift on the wind lanes with dries, preferably red in colour. With no signs of fish action on the surface or beneath it, we worked our way to the east of the reservoir, fishing in Hill Farm and Pig Bay with no more success.  Keith changed his cast and put a PTN on the point and diawl bachs on the droppers.  Stuart had the first fish on a PTN, drifting towards G buoy. On the next drift Keith had his first fish on a red diawl bach. After a further hour either drifting or anchoring around G buoy, and as the conditions became less breezy, Stuart suggested to head for the south shore in the vicinity of The Seat.

This was a fortuitous move and straightaway we both had fish to the boat anchoring 30 metres off shore and we also lost quite a few as the fish nipped at the flies. The fish were taken on damsel nymph, cruncher, PTN and red diawl bachs.

By 6pm it was becoming breezy again and Keith suggested that we should give the south dam/corner a few casts. It was uncomfortable fishing as the wind made the anchored boat feel like being on a ‘bucking  bronco!’ However it was a very productive area, the fish were near the surface and were keen to follow, nip and eventually take Keith’s mini olive snake lure and also cruncher, and a small black and green lure. Stuart persevered with PTN and red diawl bachs taking fish on both before being broken.

We hooked and lost numerous fish in the last two hours in the difficult conditions. We were both impressed with the fighting quality of the Grafham fish which were were not easy to get in the net. Luckily we had two nets on board as both were needed simultaneously at one stage.

Having started the day in a very strange way, we ended it with 14 fish to the boat, many more lost and an enjoyable, if difficult, days fishing.