Salmon Galore - 4 in an hour!

After a rather uneventful summer on the Salmon front on our two beats of the Dorset Frome things are starting to 'Hot up'. During the week we had a good flush of fresh water bringing the river up by more than a foot. This was well overdue and would paper to be to the liking of the migratory fish.

A taste of things to come?

I decided that despite avoiding a bit of hard work the time had finally come for me to get round to clearing some of the long grass and nettles etc that make access to some of our pools a tad tricky.

I turned up mid morning with strimmer in one hand a rod in the other. I thought a fair bit of strumming should be rewarded with a couple of hours fishing. The first area for attention was a peninsula with a lovely looking pool that had, apparently, until recently, been aggressively defended by an angry swan.

'Swan pool'

Bank holiday success

Trips to the river have been few and far between this season for various reasons and up until today I had only managed a couple of short sessions.

Looking good - early season hopes

With the river running steady at 1m on the gauge at East Stoke the river couldn't be looking better. The winter floods have given the river bed a good clean and the runs look superb. The large inaccessible pool at the top of our beat has now been by-passed by the main river. A walk there a couple of weeks ago confirmed what i felt might have happened. The big question now is what difference will this make to the fishing on our top beat? On a positive note I would think that the fish might be spread out a little better.

New season - new river

After a very wet winter one can only imagine the effects on the river and its lies. As ever, on the Frome the river will be very different to the year before with some old lies destroyed and some new ones created. I'm even wondering if one of the pools on our top beet has been completely re-formed. I had hoped to go down and do some bank work this weekend but finding the bank may prove difficult. Currently the river level at East Stoke (between our two beats) is sitting at 1.48m. A couple of years back I wrote a blog post when i had a fish at 1.35m, fishing was a tad tricky as there was a long wade just to get to the river.

As the Season starts on the first of March, there will be little hope of getting to cast a fly for at least 2 or three weeks. Not an ideal start to the season but i look forward to surveying the "new" river once levels drop