Spring is now well underway with the hedges and trees starting to turn green, birds singing and the Insect life has exploded. I love the next few months the fishing opportunities are everywhere. This month as been incredibly windy not offering me many chances to get out with the fly rod other than the first week of the month, an early finish from work one Thursday saw me head to a small river in the North Yorkshire Moors.

A place I’ve fished since I was a young boy, the fish aren’t very big by anyone’s standards but they are completely wild and stunning. It was still pretty chilly and there was a distinct lack of any type of hatch, but perseverance making prospecting casts to bubble lines and creases with a small 16 foam dun pattern to imitate a small Dark Olive proved fruit full managing to lift the odd fish up to the surface, again nothing major but spectacularly beautiful.

By 6pm the sun had started to dip behind the trees and the temperature plummeted so I called it a day and headed out for a Fish and Chip supper.

That weekend I decided a day on the beach was in order, not something I had done much of recently but something I do enjoy.
Armed with a bucket of fresh Yellow Tails I hit the Holderness coast. The conditions were pretty good for a few bass, but with the winds increasing and a storm landing later that day I was going to have my work cut out.

My plan was to arrive on the beach around low water and see what topography the beach had and fish the flooding tide, by doing your home work and finding the holes and gulleys you can really improve your catch rate as these are the areas the bass look to feed in.
I found myself a nice hole on the end of a gulley and a nice comfortable casting range.
The session went well with pretty much a bite a chuck albeit only small fish, still it was nice to be back out on the coast.

For the remainder of the month I focused my attentions on a local gravel pit, this pit is renowned for its quality tench fishing. It’s a fairly deep pit and by mid spring the weed starts to take hold, the tench are usually slow getting going but been eager I started early any way. Over the last three weeks of April I managed 4 nights most were just 12 hours between work, been packed up and away In the van by 6.30am.

The first couple of nights I awoke to a heavy frost which didn’t help the situation. I applied a similar approach to each session, opting to fish on small clear areas amongst the weed found by leading about and then spombing a mix of boilie, corn, hemp, pellets and maggots to the area and present a small solid bag over the top.

I caught each session but only smaller fish. I didn’t really get my teeth in to it and enjoy it as the lake became very busy with Carp anglers and a lot of the decent areas were stitched up for days on end. I will probably return in a couple of months once the carp have spawned and the angling pressure eases abit.

In summary quite a slow month for me, not getting a great deal of time on the bank either. I’m definitely missing the rivers…