fished very fast on hi

Top team on day one was the local Greys Team, Rutland Water Flyfishers, who amassed 9 more fish than any other team with their 38 trout for 81pounds exactly. The Rutland team had three of their team catch ten-fish limit bags; they were, Paul Wild with 27lbs 5oz, Andrew Flitcroft with 20lbs 12oz and Mike Gunnell with 19lbs 5oz. Sean Cutting caught eight trout weighing 13lbs 10oz. A really great team performance on a day that the organisers and fisheries staff predicted would produce half the number of fish that it ended up with.Would the lead of one ounce short of 23pounds be enough to see the team home on the following day? I think that most of the competitors believed that they were only realistically fishing for second place as a very quick limit or two would be required to knock Rutland off the top. A great deal would depend upon the weather – and whether the Rutland Water trout would feed as well for a second day running!Perhaps most ominously in second place were the Cormorant Fly Fishers, closely followed by The Falcons – one of the Scottish teams present, then came Loop Queen Mother. In fifth were Bath and District, sixth Royal Marines, seventh Fulling Mill Weald of Kent, eighth Eaglesham FF and ninth, and possibly with the very last outside chance, were Ospreys.Day two saw a complete contrast weather-wise. A totally cloudy sky, very gentle breeze and fish moving literally all over the reservoir! Would this mean that some of the boats might just venture further than the main basin – where every boat had fished on the first day? Would some of the anglers use floating lines and small flies instead of the predominance of boobies, sparklers and assorted lures? To the first question, the answer was basically NO, though at various times in the day all of SIX boats tried the South Arm! At no stage did a boat venture up the North Arm on either of the two days. I find this puzzling as we had a look around there in the afternoon and saw plenty of fish moving on the top! To the second question the answer is that some anglers tempted their fish on dries and some on nymphs, but the vast majority of the successful fishers took their trout on lures – fished very fast on hi-density lines, but cast across the moving trout!Throughout the day, word started filtering in to us that a number of anglers had indeed caught their limits quickly and thus it was just possible that the Rutland team might get overhauled. It would all depend upon how well they caught fish themselves. When the teams came in I checked amongst them. Rutland Water Flyfishers had two limits, a six and a nine – totalling 35 fish. Surely they couldn’t be caught! But there were two teams with all four anglers taking their ten fish limits. Ospreys caught very well and totalled 93 pounds in weight, but amazingly, Cormorants had a grand total of 99lbs 13oz for their 40 fish. This weight was greatly helped by individual winner on day two – Dave Shipman – he caught his ten fish in just over an hour and forty minutes, a remarkable achievement indeed. This fine team performance enabled Cormorants to leap above Rutland Water Flyfishers and win the event for the second year running! Rutland Water had to console themselves with a comfortable second place, whilst Ospreys improved six places to fill third spot. I will look at the individual placings next week and give a full roundup of how each of the 35 teams fared.Tight lines for now,

Martin Cottis