Rib Valley

[eds23]

TEXTTEXT Planning a day at Rib Valley tomorrow (friday). The owner's answering machine says that fly fishing is extremely difficult at the moment, and he has lowered the price down to £9 per day, boats are free and fishing with maggots and sweetcorn is also permitted under a bite indicator!!! (barbaric in my eyes!!) He attributes this to high water temperature (above 18c).

Sounds like a challenge if you ask me. Any useful tips on how to get them biting my FLIES. I was thinking intermediate line with a washing line set up (booby and a few nymphs), BUNG (if i'm forced), weighted orange lures on my intermediate (don't own a sinker).

Any other ideas from you lot.

Thanks

Ed ;D ;D ;D

[Clackster]

Hi Ed

No stocking of Rib Valley in recent weeks - the managment tries to get all of the trout out in the summer as they tend to go belly up this time of year. Hence allowing coarse fishing on the lake - see their website for details:

www.ribvalleyfishinglakes.com

Note that full coarse tactics are allowed, so you could be fishing next to someone with two carp rods out!

Personally I'm waiting for autumn restocking before going back, but if you go please let us all know how you get on.

If you know of a stillwater in the southeast that does fish well at this time of year please let me know!

Paul

[eds23]

Thoroughly enjoyable day out at Rib today. took a boat out about 2pm. Nothing showing at all so took to my standard nymph tactics of small black buzzer, GRHE and green nymph. After an hour of nothing, moved up to the top end near to the fish cage and moored there. Within 1/2 hour the fish were up on top and rising all around my boat. Not just a few, a LOT. They must have been taking pupae in the surface film as there was no fly life at all around. didn't see any casings but just assumed they were taking the ascending nymph. The rises continued for at least 4 hours until the wind dropped and I missed 3 good pulls, plus lost 2 good fish, one of them broke me. Saw some absolute monsters head and tailing and 1 that jumped clean out of the water which was at least 8lbs.

Finally I saw a bright red buzzer casing about an inch long drift past the boat so switched to a red buzzer, bloodworm and the GRHE and had another take again missed as I was eating a sandwich at the time. Come 7pm the wind dropped and the fish buggered off with only the odd intermitent rise.

Certainly not a waste of time fishing there if you have the right conditions, ie overcast and a bit of wind. There were a 2 or 3 bait fishermen but I didn't see them catch anything. Couple of guys fly fishing off the bank but they gave up after a couple of hours.

To sum up, great day out floating around in a FREE boat loads of fish in there, hard to catch but by no means impossible and definitely some big fellas out there.

[eds23]

Oh by the way, no need for any of that washing line or bung business, the feeding fish are crusing about 6 inches under the surface!!!

[Clackster]

Ed,

Pleased you had a good day! Was it indeed £9 for the session?

If so, as a lot of fish fail to survive the high water temperatures, I guess we should applaud the fishery for reducing prices at this time of year. Plus its a nice spot to drift around in a boat, even if the fish are a little testy!

I like Rib Valley - the fish are usually excellent silvery triploid that eat well, and the free shelter and tea and coffee is gratefully appreciated at times! Did you see anyone fishing Millenium lake whilst you were there?

Paul

[eds23]

Yes it was £9 which I thought very reasonable as theres a good chance of hooking something special. Saw a couple of fatalities belly up but the fishery manager said that there were at least 1000 trout in there at the moment.