Summer fishin : “hot , wet, & wild”

With the water temperature in the lake varying from 21.3 degrees at 5 metres depth to 23 degrees at the surface, this was always going to be a tough day’s fishing. The sun was out in the morning, and I sat out there on the tube, lathered up with suncream, thankful for the breeze, and not entirely confident.

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Recce

To reconnoitre:To Survey, make a reconnaissance of, explore, scout (out), make a survey of, make an observation of. Something I like to do from time to time, is to go and find a “new” piece of water, to give it a look over, and to “plan the attack”, so to speak. These expeditions steal precious fishing time, so they are best undertaken on those hot blustery days when, if you were out there with a fly rod, you would be sleeping under a tree anyway. Stillwaters seldom need this kind of work….they are by their very nature, easy things to

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A buzzard

From a way off I thought this was a steppe buzzard A closer look revealed a rufus coloured underbelly. An immature Jackal Buzzard I thought at first, but of course that bird has a rufus band across the chest.  As an amateur birder I really cant be sure. All I know is that those primary feathers look very familiar. I have two of them stuck in my fishing hat! Yesterday I saw a book on raptors in the bookshop, and with only  a mental picture, I decided that it probably is a Steppe Buzzard. They are fairly common, but their

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Tenacity and persistence

I don’t know about you, but I sometimes have to check myself. I have to take note and avoid falling into the trap, the lazy trap, of going through the motions, and not fishing properly. Typically at day’s end, or when fishing in less than ideal conditions, ones mind starts to wander. The most classic symptoms of this are probably: starting to retrieve the fly too fast lifting off to cast earlier than you should: not fishing the cast out Moving to a new spot and failing to fish the water under your feet, but just casting “out there” not

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