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Some years ago I took the notion that I would like to catch a truly wild trout on the fly, but not just any trout. I wanted to catch one of the big fish eating trout that are often called Ferox. One wind swept day at the end of March found me in a large traditionally clinker built boat slowly meandering around a huge sheet of Inland water with its multitude of islands. When I say huge I mean huge by UK standards, 25 miles long and some ten miles wide is big by anyones standard. On one side of the boat there was a downrigger, set to troll a fish bait at great depth, but it was only there as a teaser to try and get the fish interested and never meant to catch the fish. My fishing gear was used on the opposite side of the boat, this consisted of a very large and heavy brass tube fly, some 3inch long dressed in black, yellow and silver sporting a rather large treble hook, attached to my 10ft nylon leader , a 30 yard weight forward 12 weight ultrafast sink line and 150 yards of backing line filled my reel, a 16' double handed Salmon fly rod completed to outfit and it was gear I was very used to using, however I normal used it for casting on some great Salmon rivers. This time I was simply casting the fly out behind the boat and pulling the backing of the reel as fast as I could allowing the whole lot to sink into the depths, some 90-130 feet down and when it touched down I reeled in some ten feet of backing before gently working the fly sink and draw. Every now and then I would let line out to check the depth or reel in some to shallow up, strange how ones heart would skip a beat every time it touched bottom! We had been at this for some 4 hours, all the time getting soaked by the constant waves crashing over the side of the boat, when the down rigger released, I franticly worked the fly to no avail, that was the total excitement that day, some would say I should have had hooks in the bait!. Dawn the following day saw us on the loch in the boat again on a rolling 3ft wave with perfect overcast and very cold conditions.' Fishing in 30-40 ft of water produced 2 small jack pike, so after lunch we moved back into deeper water. At 2.30pm I was watching the fish finder/ depth sounder when I could clearly see a fish come up ten feet or so and start moving back and fourth at the back of the trolled fish, it was clearly a big fish and I worked my fly with a little more effort whilst still watching the sounder. The fish vanished of the screen for a minute or so and then it happened, the line simply felt different, I lifted hard and there was a resistance like a wet rag, I started hand lining to get the rag in the boat, about half way up the rag woke up and took all my gained line back, that was its only good run, it was then simply a matter of getting it back 130+feet . The fish was slid over the net and its beauty was there for me to behold in-between its mad slapping about and to realise a dream, a double figure wild brown on the fly, it was just over 10lbs and was slipped back carefully to hopefully live the rest of its life in piece. The memory of that trout and the 3 that followed will live with me to my dying day, no more or less than any other of my red letter captures over the years, captures that make life truly worth living.

It does seem unseasonally warm at the minute so im going to take advantage and get out as much as I can. I normally Pike fish at this time of the year but Ive packed a small bag with carp bits and bait just in case I spot any activity. I might even end up fishing on Christmas day itself.

Hopefully I'm out tomorrow afternoon and the. Again all day Saturday 😁

Too good to miss for me. I’m getting down in the morning!

Well I'm out tonight in the mild weather. 4 others were here when I turned up and meant I couldn't fish my normal area. Luckily last week I spread bait all over the lake before I left. I'm giving the other open water area a shot after seeing nothing for 2 hours worth of looking apart from silvers. Three rods cast out with pub chucks looking for a decent drop. Had a single bleep on one but still yet to see/hear a carp! Fingers crossed they get active during the dark and I can locate them.