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| Harry has a fish on....near Arctic conditions in March |
The coldest March for 50 years? Snow throughout the month and disrupted travel again this weekend - the 23/24th? Perhaps. All I know is, it's been about 11 months since we had a prolonged spell of warm, settled weather. In fact, March and April 2012 were warm, dry months with higher than average temperatures and a drought in 5 or 6 counties. We went for almost six weeks without rain and we were all confident of a long, hot dry summer. I showed pictures of Bewl Reservoir at its lowest ever level - you can read that again HERE if you want to remind yourselves, and the Water Authorities were concerned about future supplies and low water tables. But, as we all know, from mid April on, we had the wettest Summer ever, with floods all across the UK, waterlogged fields, impassable roads and some communities suffering flooding, in some cases, three or four times in as many months.
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| Work on the new pond shows the amount of water lying on the fields... |
Yet Harry and I ventured out into the 2 degree, end of March weather, with a cold, North-Easterly gale making it feel more like minus 5. We are a hardy lot us anglers - are we not? The good news is that Trout like lower water temperatures and are happy to feed when other, naturalised species are not. So although we were dressed like Explorers of the Frozen North, trudging our way up the hill in layer upon layer of thermal and waterproof clothing, like over-burdened advertisements for Michelin Snow wear, we at least didn't have too many problems contacting with the fish which wanted large, showy flies, shunning anything smaller than a size 10. It took me an hour or so to work that last bit out, actually; Harry had two fish before I changed flies from a small-ish nymph pattern to a large gold head olive damsel. The cold must have slowed down my thinking.
It was good to be out, but better still to get home to a wood fire, hot tea and supper, roll on Spring and at least a slightly higher temperature - double figures would be nice...
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| A silver bar of light on a cold day |
