Despite the continued foul weather, floods and cold the river fishing in the Yorkshire Dales has been excellent this last couple of weeks, it’s all a question of knowing where to go.

The weather pattern this last three weeks has been heavy rain at the back end of each week raising river levels and putting some of the rivers out of action over the weekend and until early the following week, the beauty of fishing in the Yorkshire Dales is that there are so many rivers there is usually somewhere, other than in extreme conditions that’s fishable.  Each river reacts differently, some are less effected by rain or run off and clear very quickly and obviously the upper reaches are the first to become fishable after a flood. Even in very high water there is a chance of a few fish so long as the water is reasonably clear.

Sometimes a bit of “fire fighting” is required but more often than not I get away with it and this has been very much the case over the last few weeks.  Actually the fishing overall has been excellent and finally the fish have been starting to look up and behave much more like they should be doing at this time of year, we have been pulling fish up on Klink’s and smaller dries and my ECH nymph has really been doing some damage.  This last week there have been a couple of exceptionally good fish caught by clients I have guided.

On Monday regular GFFUK client David Langridge latched into a big brown trout on the ECH nymph, the fish fought hard for 35 minutes before I was finally able to get the net under it, exciting stuff.  It pulled the scales down to 4lb 6oz, another monster wild brown from a Yorkshire river, David was to say the least over the moon!

On Thursday repeat client Dave Birchall had an excellent day catching plenty of wild brown trout and grayling.  Mid afternoon he hooked a large grayling again on my ECH nymph and after a spirited and prolonged fight finally landed the fish which weighed in at 2lb 4oz an exceptional grayling for a Dales river, Dave was delighted.

It’s all about knowing where to go!