The Lady of the Stream

So the weather was not that bad. It did rain, but there were some clear patches and the sun even came out once or twice. During one of the clear periods, I went out on the river to see what was in the swim. After an extraordinarily wet June, the river was full and slightly murky. There were a few fish though and what I found was this: A Greyling (Thymallus thymallus), known as The Lady of the Stream. Caught with a small daddy-long-legs dry fly hiding a 13mm hook (below). The fly is actually mimicking the Crane fly which you will find in abundance near the rivers.

This particular fish was about 30cm long and a very beautiful specimen. I actually mistook it for a trout as I saw it next to a small bridge on the river Selle at Conty, just up from the old railway station. I was able to cast the fly over and above the fish without having to back-cast as I was only about four meters from the fish, luckily just out of it's angle of vision. For five minutes I played with the fly, trying to tempt the sleepy creature. And then, as if just for my pleasure and knowing that it was a protected species and would be put back, it rose and took the fly. Without much of a fight, I landed the young Salmonid onto the bank. I don't know who was more startled, me or the fish. "A Greyling!" I proclaimed to the birds and trees. The first one that I've caught here as well.

I fumbled to get my mobile phone out of my pocket to take the photo above. Not great quality, but it shows the beautiful dorsal fin, indicative of the species. I removed the hook and returned it to the water. The poor thing didn't move for about a minute and I thought that it was dead, but then it stopped pretending and rolled over and swam off to same spot that it was caught. It would not have been fair to catch it again, so I left the fish alone, knowing that one day, we may just meet up again.

More info:
Wikipedia (English): Greyling
Wikipedia (French): Ombre

The weather...

... is wet. Grotty weather forecast for the next few days. Not looking good for fishing on the lakes or river this week-end. There is a trout competition on Sunday and I was hoping to enter, but I may just reserve that decision for tomorrow. If the conditions are bad, then I may just simmer for a week.

Gilfin 455

A 100mm (4") Gilfin 455 reel that I picked up recently. Great movement and excellent brake system. Case says: "Gilfin Model 455, Distributed by Gilfin International Fishing Tackle Ltd., London, England."

Fly fiesta !

I have been scanning some of my flies. As you see, these are old salmon flies. I've printed them out in hi-resolution and now they are framed and posted around the house. These are low resolution images... if anyone is interested in the big files, drop me a line.

Firstly, a Shrimp of sorts, hook 28mm long:

Some old Dee salmon flies, hooks 30mm and 40mm long:

 

Old Dee or Spey salmon fly, hook 40mm long:

Below, a Toppy, a very early pattern described by William Scrope in Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing on the Tweed (1843), together with a Toppy variant. Hooks 45mm and 50mm long:

 

The rest of this little collection that belonged to the previous owner of a JJS Walker Bampton rod that I now have in my possession. Some of the doubles and trebles look quite ferocious:

 

Here is a box of flies. I haven't touched it since it came earlier in the Spring as it looks interesting as is in a random sort of way. One or two salmon flies, but mostly trout flies. All in a Richard Wheatley box that was made for Hardy Brothers:

JJS Walker Bampton & Co 9' 6" trout rod

9' feet 6" inches the rod is in perfect order throughout and weighs just 204 gms. Green silk whipping. Spiral lockfast type Brass ferrules are in perfect condition and pull apart with a good distinct pop.

12" inch Cork handle with alloy reel fittings in perfect condition with screw-fit rubber button. Lower alloy fitting is stamped " J.J.S. WALKER.BAMPTON & Co Makers Alnwick " It also bears impressed serial number '17372'.

A vintage English split-cane fly rod in lovely condition.

 

 

 




 

 I also picked up a few salmon and trout flies, that belonged to the previous owner of the Walker Bampton rod. Some are stunning indeed. Here I've roughly sorted them to size and used an old wooden box to store them.

 

Timed target casting

Field & Stream's FFlogger blog has an article that challenges you to Cast 40 Feet in Four Seconds. Instead of going for distance - as we all tend do, the article encourages you to set up targets at about 40 feet that are called by a gillie and then targeted by the caster. This improves your accuracy over realistic distances and helps you perhaps track a moving fish.

I'm all for it as this is the way that you learn to catch the fish. I'm still casting under my trees out in the back garden during the week when we're not fishing and I find that as the summer progresses, the tree branches are drooping with the weight of the leaves and perhaps moisture. I have to modify my techniques every now and then.

Check out the full article @ Field & Stream

The Selle and Evoissons

After a week of June rain, the rivers are full and silty. The fish are not biting in the lakes and very few fish are even visible in the rivers. The sun was out so I took some shots of the Selle and Evoissons river. The image on the right show some clear water in the shallows.


The Evoissons joins the Selle at Conty. In this photo (left), the Selle is on the left and the slower flowing Evoissons joins on the right.


(right) The little footbridge that allows us to cross the Selle to the left bank of the Evoissons. Some good fly fishing spots with plenty of space to cast.


(left) Walking up the Evoissons a little, we come to some shallow runs where the local cross-country carriage racing courses ford the river. Plenty of wildlife visible. Birds, water rats and frogs.


(right) A moorhen with a young chick on the Selle.







(left) A pair of swans on the banks of the Selle.












(right) One of the lakes of the Conty system called Les Etournelles that is not fished and therefore has plenty of wild fish. Crystal clear water, perhaps 10 pairs of swan and fish everywhere. Here some fry are swimming around in the safety of the weed.






One of the lake swans. What a life!

Cleaning my Walker-Bampton reel

After a little research and some very good advice found on The Classic Fly Rod Forum, I have started to clean up the old 4" JJS Walker-Bampton reel.

The reel has been taken apart and the individual pieces are wiped down to remove grease and grime. The reel and parts are then soaked for half an hour in a 4-part warm water, 1-part vinegar solution. This slightly acid mix stabilizes any corrosion and loosen caked-in grime. Afterwards, I cleaned the parts with water and a little detergent (slightly alkaline) to remove any acidity and clean further. Then a good rinse with cold water.

The reel is then waxed and the moving parts and threads are oiled and greased.

Finished results:

 

The season moves on

As Spring makes way for Summer and the mayflies fly off, we are still catching trout on the weekends. We went out early on Saturday morning. Before I even had my bait in the water, Tom had his first trout on the hook. Tom caught two 32cm rainbow trout. I also brought home 2 for the pot. We actually stopped fishing due to the rain that seemed to fall only over the lake where we were. As we drove off at about 10:30, it cleared up again. We left wet, but very content.

Left, Tom in his camo outfit.

Garden fishing

Tom and I have been fishing in the garden all this week. About 30 minutes a day. We have used all of our three carbon fly rods and have compared the actions between them. #5 and #6 line on the little Blazer and the Vision reels respectively. We're using a 6ft leader and a few strands of red wool for a fly.

I was showing Tom the basics of fly casting and we set out a tape measure on the grass at about 25ft. We extended it to 30ft when the technique was working. We're casting between and under trees so we have to be careful on the back-cast. We've only lost one bit of wool so far into the trees so it's not a disaster.

I'm casting about 50ft without problem and we're both hitting a 5cm x 5cm mark perfectly most of the time (when the wind is not gusting). Tom at 25ft to 30ft and me up to about 50ft. I can't go further due to hedges and trees.

We both have an ache in our right arm and red palms on our hands.

Next stop the soccer field up the road...

4" JJS Walker Bampton & Co salmon reel

 

I have received my Walker Bampton reel that I bought soon after the Walker Bampton rod. The rod will follow soon as there was another purchace from the same seller. What a great reel - hopefully it will work well with the rod and compliment the classic lines of the split-cane whilst out on the river.

4" diameter (100mm) traditional aluminium salmon reel. Probably made for Walker Bampton by Dingley, circa 1930.

With strong fixed click check, ebonite handle knob with brass fittings, nickel silver line roller, aluminium foot mounted with 4 steel screws. The reel is quite heavy by today's standards, but it is very solid and looks like it will last for another century or two.

The reel has been stored in a dusty box somewhere for ages, but has very old grease keeping the mechanism in good working order.

It arrived with an old olive-green braided line, probably a backing line on the spool.

 

The stamp says: "J.J.S. Walker.Bampton & Co - Makers - Alnwick"

The variable brake and ratchet system. Optimised for right hand retrieve which is fine for me. It clicks when the spool turns both ways, a little stiffer when the line is pulled out obviously. Not much difference between the maximum setting either way - I don't thing the fish would notice.

Vintage flies

Whilst on the topic of vintage fishing tackle and prices, why not talk about vintage flies and how much they are worth. What is the value of a particular fly? An old design can always be made again - right? So is it worthwhile or wise to spend money on old vintage flies?

How can you put a value on flies? Can you test the fungi, rot and mildew? Are some old patterns not made any more? Are certain flies tied in a certain way? Is there a surplus value on the old in some cases?

 

I recently picked up a collection of old salmon flies. I based my decision to buy on the price of modern flies and I think that I got a good deal. They are about 50 years old so is this good? We'll see if they catch fish. Or else they just may end up in a framed box on the wall...

Vintage reels

What about vintage reels? Is the idea of paying thousands of Pounds, Dollars or Euros for and old and dusty reel worthwhile? I sometimes think that Fly fishing is a sport taken up by the super-rich and these guys feel that if they are not spending £600 on a reel then it must be crap.

I do collect various things. I do understand that collectors are willing to pay high prices to satisfy their desires to own one of every model of a particular brand.

I have a romantic desire to catch a large brown trout on a cane rod.

I'll show some vintage stuff soon.

Vintage rods

I'm now suckered into this hobby. If someone had warned me at the start that it was going to get expensive then I may have taken up train-spotting, but I started of with good cheap products from Decathlon and as I'm fishing more, and reading about fishing online when I'm not fishing, then I'm getting pulled down into the vortex of hi-tech modern, authentic classic rods and expensive equipment.

I see a split-cane rod on eBay. It sells for about £100. The same rod - as it is very specific - sold at an auction house a month earlier for £30 together with a couple of other rods. It seems the home shoppers are paying top dollar for items that cost quite a bit less if you are prepared to do some leg-work.

eBay is a wonderful place to shop as it is all there, but you are not buying vintage items cheaply. It is the guys that go to the smaller auction houses picking up equipment from the estates of the deceased that are getting the deals, but then they sell the items straight on to mugs like me...

Look at any old Hardy rod in good condition. It will sell for £70 to £300 depending on condition and rarity. There are more expensive ones and there are the roughed up damages rods that go for nothing, but there must be thousands of old rods sitting in attics all over Europe. Fishing was and probably still is the most wildly practised hobby amongst the boys and men of Europe.

I now have a J.J.S. Walker-Bampton & Co rod and reel. Probably made in the 1930's in Alnwick, Northumberland. What did I pay for them... go figure!

Fly Reels

I've had a couple of fly reels that I've used over the last 10 years. I've been happy with my good value Decathlon rods and reels. The Decathlon #5/6 'May Fly' branded reel (left) with a diameter of 80mm has worked fine over the last seven or eight years. Priced at 229 Francs (€34.91) in about 1999. Decathlon is a great first stop for anyone starting out in a new sport and you can get full equipped without breaking the bank.









#5/6 BFR SuperFly-75 reel (right). Bought from Decathlon and also priced at €34.91 seven years ago. 88mm in diameter. Recently have I been looking at the market as a whole and seen the scope of what is available. As I've been expanding my rod collection recently, I've bought two new reels too, one relatively cheap Blazer 5/6 and a reasonably prised Vision Koma 6/7.










The #5/6 Blazer (left) looks nice and shiny, but is actually a cheap, die cast, low cost reel sold on eBay for under £15 (€22) and promoted as a higher quality reel. It works fine, but would make a good present for a kid with aspirations of getting into fly fishing. A smaller reel with a diameter of 70mm. I think my son will use this reel until he asks for something better.










The #6/7 Koma reel (right), made by the Finnish company Vision, has a good retrieve rate with its 97mm diameter spool. Anodized to a titanium finish these reels not only look the part but also out perform any other reel in their category (so says the blurb). Semi-machined - so I suppose semi die-cast too. Priced just under £50 (€74), it is a reasonably priced good reel and I think that it is excellent value for money. My main reel is loaded with Greys GRXi Floating WF#6 line.








This (left) is the spare spool of the Vision Koma that is loaded with Greys GRXi Intermediate WF#6 clear line. Both spools have 75m green 30lb backing.

In the big scheme of things, all these reels are very affordable. The quality amongst them is mainly fine, although I can arrange these reels from cheapest to mopst expensive and there is a direct relation with their quality. So what of the Hardy, Greys, Orvis, G Loomis and Loop reels. Can you justify £250, £400 or even £800 or more for a fly reel? So are we to assume that the expensive reels are that much better? Perhaps so...





I wonder if I will ever justify the purchase of a new Hardy Angel, Bouglé or Cascapedia reel - not just to the wife, but to myself!