May was a month of mixed weather, with big winds heavy rain and then a record breaking heat wave. At the start of the month the winds dropped away for a very pleasant evenings fly fishing up in the moors.

Managing to hook 6 fish and land 5 in a nice couple of hours fishing. Finding the better fish in very skinny water with no more than 6in of water, making the fish very spooky but if you take your time and stay low and pausing periodically and wait for another rise you can get right on them.

With lots of Caddis zipping about on the surface my fly of choice was a trusty Deer hair emerger on a relatively small size 18 hook. It usually resulted in a rise within seconds of covering the fish for the first time.

Proper relaxing fishing soaking up the surroundings and appreciating nature with a multitude of birds in and around the stream and also spotting a couple of small Stoats rolling around with each other.

For the rest of May i set my self a target of a specimen Bass from the Humber estuary, this time of year over previous years it’s thrown up the odd real monster in to double figures. So you’re always in with a chance of that special fish.

I managed 3 sessions resulting in no fewer than 30 bass but again nothing of size, ideally I wanted to be fishing with fresh peeler but I was unable to get hold of any other than paying Dick Turpin prices, there’s no way I’m paying £1.50-£1.80 for a small to medium peeler.

So armed with a bucket of freshly dug Yellow Tails was the next best thing. Fishing short sessions a couple of hours either side of high water in the salt marshes was very consistent but the big girls eluded me.

Again nothing major to report this month, but with June on the horizon brings with it the start of the river season and hopefully a Tope session…