I was about to write that nobody, except me, has fished Beanhill Lake this week, doubtless due to the weather. But only just now two new customers turned up, so I showed them down to the waterside in a storm of wind and rain. They were quite well equipped with rods and flies except that, as is so often the case with small still water anglers, they had brought only floating lines.

The day before, as an experiment, I had decided to see how I got on myself with the floating line only, as so many visitors seem to impose that restriction on themselves. Early morning conditions had been difficult, calm and clear with plenty of sun, so that hooks glittered and leaders produced shadows like cables.  I started off with very small speck nymphs, which produced only a few nervous twitches during the first hour. I missed several fish by lining them on the shallows.

So I sat down with a coffee and started to think the situation over. Going back to basics, what has previously worked here in December? The answer was fairly obvious. There they were, occupying the corner of the big fly box as they have done for years: what Arthur Cove used to call the “Red Diddy”. John Goddard used a blood worm which had a curved piece of red ibis as a tail to give a bit of movement and “kick,” but Arthur Cove’s version used a red rubber band. The advent of bright red flexifloss has made construction even simpler. You take a piece from 11/4 to 11/2 inches long and with red tying thread lash it to a hook, ideally one with a curve like a Kamasan B110 grub or the B420 sedge hook in about size 14, leaving a bit of rubber sticking out fore and aft to waggle enticingly, then tie off and varnish the head.

That’s it, the whole story. With very few exceptions, really useful flies are also easy to make, in my experience.  There is a weighted version with a bead in the middle – the so-called Spectral Bloodworm – but on this occasion I wanted a slow sinking version. Would it be acceptable to Beanhill’s rainbows this year? It certainly was, and by midday I had 7. This is not generally a fly for retrieving much, and will sometimes even catch when lying on the bottom. All those fish had either taken confidently on the drop or by following the fly drifting in to the bank at my feet with a wind which had started up.

After lunch it was difficult again, and although I persevered with the Diddy and a few other patterns, there were no more takes. The temperature was dropping, and although I knew exactly were the shoals were, the rainbows seemed to have turned dour. My patience was ended by 3 o’clock, when I gave up my experiment and put up the second rod with an Airflo clear intermediate sinking line and a small Dawson’s Olive. The first two long casts with this, leading the brownish green fly very slowly down from the surface towards the weed beds, produced thumping takes and 2 fish – this in an area which had previously been fished hard with the floating line. It wasn’t too difficult to take 3 more before dusk, making 12 for the day. There is a lesson in all this – don’t keep flogging away if it isn’t working, change your flies, change your retrieve, change your location, but above all, experiment with lines to produce a different path of movement for the fly. Show them something they didn’t see before!   

(Grayling fishing has been more or less washed out on the upper Wye, although occasionally possible between storms at the very top near Langurig, according to the Foundation. Even the Gloucestershire Coln is carrying a lot of coloured water).           
Oliver Burch