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Grafham 20/03/2025

 So with Draycote still being closed and Clywedog 4 hours away I need to find somewhere else to fish.

Decided to give Grafham a go, to be honest it was a toss up between there or Pitsford but fished Pitsford last October and never fished Grafham so decided to go there

Decided to take the Thursday off as the weather forecast was a huge improvement on the 4-5 degrees we have had for a while so just decided to book it and go

5:15 alarm (not pleasant) and got on the road just after 6, arrived at Grafham just after 8

First impression was a large car park and well stocked tackle shop including a lot of fly tieing gear which was a pleasant surprise so joined the queue of anglers checking in and got the boat number

Bright Blue sky and flat calm so decided the fish would be deepish so set up a DI5 sweep with a 3 fly cast of pseudo pitsford pea (tied with micro fritz) a black and holographic red cormorant and a sort of diawl bach with Chartreuse goose biots instead of jungle cock, couldn't decide what other depths might be required so didn't set up the second rod - will see how the day goes and decide later

Decided to head out straight from the jetty to the far shore - no reason except I like to fish just off the shore

Started off in sanctuary bay and spent about 20 minutes there with nothing happening, large concentration of boats just down the shore so decided to move a bit (looking at a map later the anchored boats all 9 of them were in Hill Farm Bay and I was drifting around in the Stumps)

Count down of 19 and slow figure of 8 quickly got me a  fish on the cormorant which is always nice and over the next couple of hours manged to get 6 into the boat - 4 to cormorant 2 to pea with another 4 long range release.

Started to get frustrated as I think catching weed most casts but not 100% sure it wasn't just me missing fish so decided to move further along the shore, went as far as pylon point drifting along but no interest at all, decided that instead of exploring further (that can wait until next time) I would go back to the stumps and try to catch a few more

Changed the cast slightly and put a humungous booby on the point to try and avoid the weed and a red devil on the top dropper

Next 2 hours was a bit mad and manged to get another 8 to the boat one to the red devil 4 to the booby and 3 more to the cormorant, the last of those completely messed up my cast so I decided to have a quick go at catching a fish with a snake (I have never managed to catch a fish on a snake despite everyone else seemingly able to absolutley go mad with them)

Hurrah - managed to actually hook one on the snake but sadly did not get it to the boat but interestingly the fish took on the hang which I left there for about 15 seconds asopposed to my more normal 5-10 seconds - may be a rethink here 

By 15:00 decided to call it a day as a 2 hour drive home beckoned, it is weird as if I hadn't caught I would probabl have stayed but putting 14 in the boat means I can leave having had a most fantastic day even though just being out on the water with nothing else to think about other than how to get a fish to take a strange looking concoction at the end of a bit of fluorocarbon is actually the best antidote to stress that I have found

Hopefully will be able to get out more regularly than last year which was sort of completely disrupted by the closure of Draycote (for some reason trying somewhere new became a big issue)

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