Hot spot jig patterns

Only a few days of the trout season left now and to make the most of it my good friend, Nicholas Steedman, and I spent a day on a small stream hoping to find some late season trout. A cold night meant that the fishing was slow in the morning although we both caught some lovely small trout in their spawning colours:

A superb hatch of various insects in the afternoon brought some great dry fly sport. The fish were clearly feeding hard before the winter and we were both able to pick off a number of fish that were picking off duns and emergers.

The standout fly of the day was this hot spot nymph:

The hot spot is tied with the new Harvey Angling micro fibre which is perfect for creating a bright target point on nymphs. However, it’s so fine that you can also use it for bodies on nymphs. The olive fly in the photo below was particularly good during hatch in the afternoon:

Nice and early start again this morning but not the best of days for it with a heavy down stream wind making casting and presentation a right royal pain in the butt.

I wasnt the only one on the river nice and early though.

I was on the river bank nice and early and kind of thinking what kind of day it was going to be with the condition against me. I was carrying two rods as normal, one rod set up for nymphing and the other for klink and dink. Both methods were going to be a bit of fun to use in the wind but I was hoping that it would die down later on in the afternoon. I’ve been fishing my normal spots over the last few weeks but today I took a different approach and fished the spots that are hard work to get at and taking full advantage of the lower water condition. I kept close to the banks fishing all the slack sides of the runs and where the wind wasnt making a ripple on the water. On times the gusts of wind would blow the indicator right out of the water and lift the nymphs right to the top, and with the klink it would shoot off like a pond skater and drag the nymph all over the shop. As I picked my way through a few spots I gradually started picking up a few small grayling and a few flighty trout that just wouldn’t stop jumping. As I was fishing quite close to me just beyond the rod tip, wading was a quiet affair and it was all slow-moving. It was working well so I stuck at it most of the day while the wind was blowing but as I thought it might it started to calm and it give me the chance to fish more open water. Getting the chance to fish the open water I set up the french leader, on the point I put a 2.8m hot spot jig and on the dropper a small pheasant tail hot spot. The nymph that was most effective throughout the daybelow.

I got myself into a nice looking run with a slow spot at the back-end and after only a few casts the indicator slipped away up river and me following with a steady lift, I was finally into one of the better ladies of the river. Thinking if there was one there, there had to be more so I fished it to its death but only managing a handful of trout and a few smaller grayling afterwards, most fish fell to the point fly and here is the first better size grayling of the day below.

The day was challenging and quite difficult but im a stubborn bugger and wouldn’t leave the river without a few better size grayling under my belt. As the day went on, without seeing any fly life of any sort I stuck to the nymphing and pulled the dry rod down to keep tangles to a minimum. Fishing become really slow in the backend of the runs in the afternoon so I moved into the heads of the runs searching out to see if I could find grayling on the feed. I walked into the head of the last run of the day pitching the nymphs high into the churning waters thinking i’d be lucky, but I was. I picked another hand full of grayling and trout from there, I finally called it a day and made the journey home. I’ll leave you with a few more photos of the fish that I manged to pick up throughout my day’s fishing and a few under water shots.