Keith Allison and John Poote: November 4th 2021

Although we had just lost an hour due to the ending of British Summer time John had heard Farmoor 2 was restocked 4 days previously. The water temperature now being 14 degrees which meant the water was warmer than the 8 degrees ambient air temperature. However it was cold enough for restocking. The wind direction was a north easterly approx 12mph, cloudy in the morning  and sunny spells.in the afternoon.

We started with a fast glass and a Cortland blue slow intermediate. We hitched up to a buoy on west side, near 6. After 20 mins and no action we moved down to rainbow corner. John had a Di  5 sweep line and I tried a Di 3. We each had a fish by noon on a yellow dancer and a muskins.

We headed back to near the jetty,  fishing down the south bank and at this stage I had a Di 7 line on and John continued with Di 5. Using Humungous white and silver boobys, with muskins, diawl bachs and tequila blobs. We had fish between us. John then lost a big fish and anchored in front of the jetty where John netted a cracking 5 pounder. It took several minutes to get in the net. I managed to get a couple of pics. 

We then tried back drifting across the north  bank fishing out of the back of the boat. There were several bank anglers, but they were not catching. After half hour without a pull we moved back to the south bank. We attached the boat to the buoy near No 7 on south bank.

This was a good move as the last hour from 3 to 4 pm proved to be our ‘purple patch’. I changed to a natural coloured minkie on point , cormorant mid dropper and orange booby top dropper. We hooked  a lot of fish as there were pods of fish fry feeding. I had a double hook up, but netted only one. It was a lovely 3.5 lb fish followed by another similar size. We ended up with18 fish to the net and many more ‘dropped’.

It was difficult to tear ourselves away but boats were due in at 4 pm. The 4 fish I took for the pot weighed 11.3 lbs. A great day  out with some great condition trout. One of the bigger fish was crammed full of small snails. I am going to try to tie a pattern to match this and can’t wait for another day out to Farmoor which has excellent Winter fishing.

Keith Allison