Fly fishing is more of a reserve option for me nowadays – I used to split my time between sea and fly fishing pretty much 50/50, even occasionally dabbling in the odd bit of coarse and pike fishing back in my youth. Nowadays 99% of the time I get the urge to go fishing however, I usually find myself contemplating saltwater venues up and down the country rather than freshwater. Today was an exception to the norm – the sea has been rough on our north east coast for over a week and in general this is a pretty dire time of year for sea fishing without putting in a few hours of travel so I decided after a 3 year hiatus to dust of the fluff chucking gear and head to my local fishery, Sharpley Springs in Seaham, County Durham.
Sharpley is a made up of 5 fly fishing only lakes stocked predominantly with hard fighting rainbow trout, although there are also some absolutely stunning brown trout, which are a lot more shy and seldom seen in comparison. There have also been some more recent introductions in the shape of tiger trout, although I’ve yet to be lucky enough to pick one out! Aside from the fly fishing only lakes there is also a small kids worm lake at the entrance of the site stocked with rainbows for the young’uns to cut their teeth on.
Most of the time when fishing this venue I tend to stick with midge patterns of some description as they’re more often than not the staple and readily fed on at some stage during the day – be it bloodworm larvae imitations, buzzers or emerging patterns. The lakes also get a regular smattering of olives also, especially in the warmer months of the year, as well as the occasional good hatch of brown sedge which can make for some really exciting dry fly fishing on a late summer evening. As the fishery is bordered by conifers and hedge rows, it’s no surprise that it gets its fair share of terrestrials as well – and this is about the time of year when hordes of adult Hawthorn flies begin to make an appearance, which on a blustery day can see the fish gorging on wind blown adults.
I arrived just before 10am and signed in at the golf lodge before heading round to the fishery. As it’s still early spring, I decide to start off with a team of 2 buzzers on a 12 foot leader to see how things go, choosing a black buzzer for the point fly and a self tied quill buzzer in dark olive on the dropper. There doesn’t appear to be much rising to start with so the idea is to straight line these to test the depths until the fish are found.
Well the first couple of hours pass with little more than a couple of twitches. I try a few different patterns and sizes but the fish are really slow on the uptake until around half an hour before midday when suddenly the lake starts to come alive with emerging midges of all sizes. There seems to be a mix of colours from pale olive, black and even orange – some of them are massive as well, the biggest I’ve seen on here before. Sure enough the trout are soon homing in on them and I quickly change to a couple of shipmans patterns to fish in the surface film. That does the trick and after turning a couple of fish over I finally hit one on a size 14 brown shipmans and the thrill of fighting a good stocky rainbow comes back – I’ve missed this!
A fine conditioned fish is soon landed and unhooked in the net – I’m on a catch and release ticket so he’s quickly unhooked and slipped back. I follow this up with another fish shortly after, this time on a black size 16 shipmans before the weather takes a turn and the luke warm sunshine turns to grey cloud and snow in a matter of minutes, putting the fish down again. The fish are still feeding though and a swap back to buzzers fished deeper and allowed to move with the wind brings a few more to the net over the course of the next couple of hours – all on black buzzers in sizes 16-14.
The weather is really making things difficult however. The midges continue to emerge infrequently, taking advantage of brief intermittences of sunshine which encourages tentative rises from hungry trout, only for them to be put down again by the onset of regular of flurries of snow and an icy breeze. The wind direction is unusually inconsistent as well which makes finding an optimal cross wind to drift the buzzers round more difficult than it should be!
Moving around a few pegs over the course of the afternoon proves fruitful however and the fish continue to oblige on the buzzers when I actually manage to get them drifting well. By the time 5pm rolls around I’ve had my fill and am starting to feel the cold! I’ve had at least a dozen fish which is a decent day really, especially given my 3 year absence!
I really enjoyed today actually despite the frustrating weather. Sea fishing is definitely my go to in most situations but with poor prospects locally at the moment it’s good to have this on the doorstep as a backup. I might even have another go in the coming weeks.
Excellent stuff! Had my pb rainbow of 19lb 9oz out of there! It’s a lovely place when the weathers with you.