Fantastic Blagdon fishing!

The opening few days on Blagdon Lake have been simply amazing!  The quality of the rainbows is superb and average sizes are well over the 2lb mark, with a smattering of overwintered fish as well.

Opening Day saw the bank anglers doing just as well as the boats, due to the fish being so close to the shores.  That trend has continued, but during the brighter days, the trout tend to move out to slightly deeper water.

Ash Trees has been the hot spot area, but Pegs point, and most of the North Shore has been producing the goods.  Action on the South Shores has not been so widespread, but Green Lawns and Rainbow Point have both been good areas.

Floating Lines with teams of buzzers or diawl bachs have been the norm, but sometimes a gold head nymph or lure on the point has helped to get the flies a bit deeper.

Dry Fly on Day 2!

Saturday started with a flat calm, so Anthony Tabor and I headed for Ash Trees.  There was a line of rising fish about 100 yards from the bank and I actually caught one on a dry fly - Anthony had 4 others on nymphs as I attempted to take my earliest ever trout on a dry from Blagdon.

Yesterday Les Toogood and I had another top day, with both of us taking limit bags and returning a few others during the course of the day.  We fished all over the lake and found fish to be pretty wide spread.  I managed a cracking 3lb 12oz overwintered fish from Butcombe late in the afternoon.

Most of the fish are feeding on daphnia, buzzers or bloodworm.  However, the fish off Rugmoor are full of corixa - very early for these, but very welcome as corixa will keep the trout feeding in the shallow water.

Chew to open this Friday.

Chew Valley opens this Friday and the water clarity is now about 6 feet.  The rainbows have all been stocked and should have acclimatised and spread out well by now.