Chew's amazing start continues

The strong winds have dropped and Chew's incredible start to the trout fishing season continues!
I fished with Rob Ratcliff yesterday and rose fish every drift in Herons Green Bay using Dries.  The buzzers were hatching all day long - big ones - and the trout were feasting on them.  I cannot remember when the trout have fought so hard on Chew and all of our fish were 3lbs and over.
We had 2 cormorant damaged trout but no pike damage - I think anglers cannot tell the difference between pike and cormaorant damage and are simply labelling everything as pike damage.

Pike on buzzers

My friend martin Cottis did an autopsy on a 6lb pike he caught on a Diawl Bach Nymph and guess what it had been feeding on? Buzzer - it was stuffed with nothing but black buzzer nymphs, proving that the odd capture of a pike on a nymph is not a coincidence - these smaller pike obviously have buzzers high on their list of food.

I also caught a 20lb pike on "black" Friday 13th May and it had one of my tags in it's dorsal fin rays.  I have tagged over 300 pike since the start of last season and over 10% have been recaptured.  Along with Bristol Water, this sampling enables us to check on the growth rate, recapture rate and movement of the pike. Incredibly, when I checked my records, it was caught on the very same day exactly 1 year ago by Mark Thompson and it weighed 17lbs 08ozs - just 2 1/2lbs weight increase in a whole year.  This shows that the likely diet for that fish was roach and not trout.  Over the course of a year, a big double eating trout at 2lbs average weight would have increased in weight by far more than a measly 2 1/2lbs!
Those sadly misguided individuals who are blaming the pike for Chew's poor form in recent years, are obviously way off the mark  A few years ago, they were blaming the cormorants whenever the fishing got hard - now it's the pikes' turn to carry the can!

First cuckoo

Friday 13th also heralded the first cuckoo on Chew this year.  For me, this is a real sign that Summer is on it's way.
I also saw a Hobby chasing insects in Villice Bay on the same day - so not such a "black" day after all!

With the 10 day forecast predicting a spell of warm weather with light winds - the fishing could get even better.