Silverburn River

4/2/2012 | Comments: 0 | Categories:

Fishing Reports

Having blanked the morning in Santon Gorge the Silverburn is only down the road and I know it has a very good head of fish. I walked it a few weeks back and they were in all the places I peered into with my polarizing glasses.

Rather than start at the harbour in the corner of Poulsom Park I parked the car opposite the airport on the industrial estate where there is a footpath to the river. In fact you can see the river from the car and hear the water. It's that close!

A few casts in the first pool, nothing. "Here we go," I thought. "An Alex report for the forum." Moved onto the left bank and cast into the next pool having replaced my nymphs with a black gnat. Bingo! Fish on! .... and off. As I stepped down into the river to retreive my first tenkara trout of the season it spat the hook. "Yup... curse of Alex."

Missed a couple more splashy rises to the fly before hooking it in the tree close to the bank that the fish were lying under. Collapse the rod to hide the tip ...nope, not going to snap the fly off, that's the only gnat I've got! Waded through the run and retrieved the fly.... muttering.

Plenty more pools and glides and riffles to go at. Next pool, with a bit of gink on the fly I sent the line to just under the bank. The water exploded within a fraction of a second it touched down and a fish on again. It's a wonderful thing that first fish, everything gets exagerated. Unfortunately the pictures do not lie.

It was hardly an explosion, more of a splash from this little chap that came to hand. It's a fish though! The first tenkara trout of the season for me. Here's the pool.

That was not the first. three more fish came out of there getting bigger each time and upto 10 inches. In fact I didn't catch another as small as that first one all day!... "Thank goodness, the curse of Alex is broken" I thought to myself with a wry smile.

So I continued up the river with the odd fish here and there. Until I got to this little glide.

I could see the fish lined up on the gravel bottom. Time to stop and experiment with flies. Nymphs difftend through them and they swam round each offering. The sakasa kebari fly here took one, then it was back to the dries. A couple missed but this fine fish stayed stuck.

In the end I had a bag of 10 fish, dropped 3 and missed *mumble* takes. One of the joys of fishing this river is that it runs next to the railway and the trains keep coming though.