Hence I was really looking forward to my return

The weather was wet and windy and the reservoir was much fuller than the last time I fished it. I have good memories of the place as, on my previous visit, I fished there with the Bristol Reservoirs Association in the Welsh Water Team Event and my team had easily won. I had had a great couple of days: eleven trout on the first, and eight on the second day of the competition. Hence I was really looking forward to my return.However, things didn’t go as well as I hoped! Biker had managed to get to the reservoir during the week for a practice and he found that there were basically two main areas where there were quite a lot of fish: the dam and the very top end. Fishing wasn’t too complicated either as slowly fished jungle cock vivas, or small black beetle patterns, were taken with relish. My partner on the day was young Carl Povey and he was happy to follow my advice on flies and drifts. I picked out the fly from his box that he should use on his cast and the one that I chose caught all three of his trout. Carl and I started fishing to the right of the cages as I had seen a few trout rising there whilst I was tackling up. Wayne Lewis had also caught one there before the start just as the boats were milling around waiting for the “hooter” to sound the start of the competition.I had my first fish after about thirty minutes on a ginger hopper on floating line and I thought that this would be the start of good things. Four hours later I was still waiting for my second! Carl and I really tried all the spots around the basin, but very little was being caught, so we headed off to see how Biker was doing. We found him doing short drifts starting by the “No Entry” buoys and he reported that he had caught eight rainbows but returned three, as they were only about 12-14 ounces! We tried this area for about an hour but I found it very difficult to drift without getting in the way of other boats. More and more anglers arrived to fish this congested area so I moved away. We found a spot with several rising fish so I quickly changed back from my intermediate to floater and put up a team of dries. I covered several pretty well but had not an offer. In the meantime Carl actually caught two of these movers with his viva, one of which was over four pounds.Eventually I did get one of the rising trout and it fought like a demon. It was long and thin and had a tail like a shovel. I think that it was stocked quite a lot earlier in the season. My partner Biker went on to weigh in eleven trout, whilst I only had two, but if he had kept just one of those small rainbows that he had returned we would have been second in the competition as he would have earned an eight pound time bonus to add to his weight. Even without the bonus we would have finished third, but as it was we had to settle for fifth. It was a most frustrating day for me as I felt that I might never get a pull from a trout. I caught both of my fish on dries and rose one other. I did not have even one hint of a take when I fished pulling flies. I keep telling myself that I must get more competitive and be prepared to jostle for position, but then I think that I cannot be doing with all that sort of behaviour.There was a good meal after the event and a low-key presentation. The winners were Wayne Lewis and Keith Tanner with twenty fish for 48lbs 13 oz. Wayne also bagged the top fish of the day at 5lbs 12oz.In second spot were Peter Phillips and Phil Cotton with 16 fish for 36lbs 7 oz. Peter was the only angler to catch a twelve fish limit (apart from my partner who managed to catch 14!), so his 5lbs time bonus came in very handy. Stewart Watkins and Scott Graham came third with 13 fish weighing 30lbs 7 oz., this was 3 ounces in front of fourth and 6 ounces ahead of Biker and me in fifth.There was to be a holiday in Sweden for the captor of the largest tagged trout, a number of which had been stocked the night before. As it happened none were caught, so the lucky angler had to be drawn from a hat!In spite of my poor performance I enjoyed the event, met some old friends and made some new ones. I have been invited to fish for sewin when I can find some spare time, and I am hoping to see a few of the competitors when they come over and fish in the Chew Valley. Ian Phillips has already been in touch about a trip to our lakes. I am looking forward to a somewhat better performance on my next trip out which is on Chew Valley Lake in Bob Handford’s new team event between all of the main teams that regularly fish the Bristol Waters. I will let you know how that went next week.Tight lines,

Martin Cottis