March 29 2021
Keith Allison and John Poote – John Goldie and Peter Aldridge

At long last we were allowed to get on the water and boat fish. John P had fished off the bank a couple of times earlier in March. He had to cast a long line to cover any fish and had caught one or two. However boat fishing will give an advantage to get over the fish.

The weather was kind with a S Westerly approx 14mph, cloudy in the morning and sunny spells.in the afternoon.
The house martins were feeding off buzzers, but we felt the fish were deep down. We tackled up with Di7 and Di 8 lines. John had a bright orange booby on point and small black cormorant on the dropper. I used a black and green booby and a coral blob on dropper.

We fished out of the back of the boat and drifted from south of lake to north. We allowed all the fly line plus a few yards of backing to sink. .John had first fish by 10 am, no retrieve just keeping in touch with the flies. My first fish was taken when John moved the boat a few yards and the fish took the coral blob which was moving quite quickly. This fish was 3.75lb and on spooning it was full of daphnia and buzzers. From then on we had many pulls and knocks and John switched to Di7 with a 14ft leader and same flies plus a buzzer pattern. At lunch we had 7 fish in the net and lost a few. We met up with John G and Peter for lunch and compared notes. They had one or two takes but nothing else. We gave them the method and fly colours and we could see this did the trick. They were getting into fish after lunch. Bad news for Peter as he lost his Di7 line, not sure if it was a HUGE fish or a lousy knot!!

The afternoon session allowed the Maestro Mr Poote to give me a master class in catching fish. I lost count of the fish John had and lost. He kindly gave me a cormorant booby which I put on the dropper and had two on it immediately. John kept catching on the orange booby with yellow foam eyes and the cormorant. We thought the cormorant was being taken as a buzzer.

We called it a day at 6 20 pm and the buzzer hatches were prolific as we left the water. We heard one of the other boats had caught a lot on muskins and buzzer patterns on intermediate lines.

It was a wonderful first day out with good company and plenty of fish. If this weather continues it looks like Farmoor is well worth another visit soon.

Keith Allison