Passion for… Favourite Swims

[John Bailey]

Another glorious sunset​

My nightly vigil on the middle Wye has provoked some comment, and there is much to add. Of course, the swim was chosen for practical reasons initially. It is easy to get to, even in heavy rain, which makes distant swims across meadows impractical. It is comparatively flood-resistant, by which I mean it takes a rise of eight feet to make it not worth a visit. It is well sheltered from main flows but even so, it is relatively snag-free. After nigh on three months I have yet to get hooked up or failed to land a fish successfully. This matters in the dark, cold and wet. The swim has a reputation as well, and provided several good fish right into November, so I have been able to fish it with confidence.



All this speaks of pragmatism, which is important, but it ignores that word passion. As the evenings have rolled by, I have found increasingly that I love that swim, that I love being there, that I have come to regard it as a sanctuary and a place I can be supremely relaxed and content. Last night, I had one quick nod on the rod tip, a super-fast bang that was impossible to hit and which never materialised. I didn’t care, the momentary interest from a fish was enough to enliven my evening.



The sunset was soul-stirring and it is a feature of favourite swims that many face West. There is a beamed cottage on the far bank, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, and I look for its lights to come on, one by one, as the dusk falls. That cottage apart, there is little or even no other sign of human presence or activity. I feel as though the world has shrunk to my swim and I am its only incumbent. I don’t take a phone – though it lies switched off in the car in case of emergency – as this is a haven where 2022 is excluded. I have come to count my boilie-fed robin as a friend, fatter by the week. I know now the grazing swans on the crops opposite, and the horses on my bank come to me as I walk past them in the late afternoon light.



For now, this is my safe place, my enchanted place, and a fish is a bonus. There have been other swims that I can measure my life by… on the Wensum there was The Alder, The Great Bend and Goliath. Although I fished the Wensum a hundred or more nights a year, man and boy, it is those three swims that I look back upon. On the Cauvery, in India, it would be Croc Rock Pool and in Mongolia it was always the Four Band Cliff that I had to visit first.

I’ll revisit these swims over the winter, but it would be great to hear of your swims that have brought that extra element to your fishing life, a place on a river or lake that means more to you than simply the fish it gives up… share if you can.




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[xenon]

My banker swim on the Colne just before it gives out to the Thames at Staines. A pool just below a footbridge where I always feel confident (well, did, at any rate until the fishing dived off a cliff these last two years) . Nothing to mark it out as special, just feels right.

 

[Keith M]

There’s a few special swims that I always feel confident in (still water and running water) and it’s the swims that I’ve got to know intimately over time and learnt about their moods in different weather situations, and precisely where their depths change and their weed beds are; and often about their different water movements.

Theres one such swim where on an icy morning I learnt about several underwater springs that erupt from the lake bed, where the spring water temperature remains fairly constant the whole year round. I found it when the lake completely froze over one year, but immediately above the springs there was still a couple of holes left in the ice.
So I head to this swim when all the waters elsewhere have started to ice over; and I know that there’s a good chance of still catching a few fish. It’s also quite a good swim on a sweltering hot day too as the spring water is a bit cooler than the water around it on a very hot day.

Keith

 

[John Bailey]

Passion for… Favourite (Grayling) Swims​

I guess this time of the winter many of us will be thinking grayling, either on float or fly. (Personally, I see merit in both and both demand a real measure of skill if you are to do them properly.)

This favourite swim on the Frome I first found way back in 2017 on an exploratory visit to the river. At that time, my largest grayling had been “mere” two pounders, and I had no real experience of how extraordinarily powerful three and four pound fish become. Indeed, this particular first visit, I hooked a fish that ran me over fifty yards and broke me in most spectacular fashion. I had absolutely no chance from start to the finish of the job, about ninety seconds after the fly was taken.



The photographs show friends Simon and Ian walking to the swim, the former playing a fish there, and me with a grayling that was on or around the three mark. Over four years, we fished the run equally with fly and float and for the life of me, I’d struggle to say which method came out on top. The real hero is the swim itself, and I often close my eyes and dream myself back there, preferably on a close, cloudy day with little wind, around 8.00am on a March morning when the river runs at good height with visibility of two feet or so. But what makes this swim so perfect, and why do big grayling inhabit it almost always, as far as we can tell and our experiences lead us to believe?

Depth… a steady four to five feet, about ideal for big grayling in my experience.

Length… this is a big swim for the Frome, and I have paced it at over eighty yards. It is amazing to think my lost monster ran all that way, and was still running when it turned the bottom, left hand bend and disappeared to the sea.

Flow rate… not slow, not quick. A decent speed, but never one to make fishing anything but comfortable. I wish I had remembered how to measure current speed in mph, but my geography lessons were well over half a century ago, and you’ll have to excuse my rule of thumb estimations.

Bed… gravel, sand and odd seams of chalk. Almost always very clean with barely any weed left over from the previous summer.




Hotspots… the run is slightly quicker and shallower at its head, and big fish have never come from there. All of them, without exception, have taken at the point where the quicker water slows down just a tad and deepens by around six inches or so. These are minor details but would seem to be critical to catching the biggest fish.

Shelter… prevailing westerlies appear to keep off it and only rarely do you see the surface ruffled. A growth of trees stands on the far bank down the swim, two thirds down the run, and grayling appear to take shelter there early mornings when we have seen hunting cormorants about. A fly fished very close to the branches often, even generally, gets taken.

A word on grayling care… is there a more difficult fish to hold or a more delicate fish to resuscitate? I find that gripping the grayling only leads to increased and prolonged struggles. If you can balance the grayling as shown, then it will rest more easily I have found. I like to let the grayling lie in the net which is placed in the weedy margins. The water must be allowed to flow over it and the grayling must have the ability to swim clear when it is ready. I don’t worry if recuperation takes twenty minutes or more… this only allows the fish to be completely recovered when it enters the river’s current.





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[John Aston]

I have never had a three but come very close, and I've had a lot of twos from my beloved North York Moors river . Stuff I've learned -

- ignore all that tired old rubbish about grayling always shoaling up 'when the water gets cold ' . Small grayling can be found in numbers (more so on Dales rivers ) but bigger fish are normally alone , or found in pairs

- don't ignore very shallow water. Deeper, perfect looking grayling pools may be deserted , but the fast and shallow tail (and slightly less often ) heads of pools can be very productive

- grayling don't seem to be very bothered about living in , or near , cover (unlike big wild trout) and rarely, if ever , run for it

- but they love being next to steep earth or clay banks

- unlike trout , grayling wont move laterally more than a foot or so , but will happily rise vertically . The message for the angler is to cover every yard wide 'lane' in a pool but don't agonise as much about exact depth when trotting

- heavy (4 AAA , or more ) floats are just fine in strong winter flows - forget about shirt button shotting and bulk it instead

- they are not line shy, so don't bugger around with stupidly light hooklengths

- fly is often better than bait (worm only on my river ) until it gets very cold . You can still catch then on fly but only if you enjoy fishing heavier nymphs

- enjoy while you can - grayling populations rise and fall quickly , thanks to a short (4years I think? ) lifespan

and finally - take any tales of two and three three pound grayling with a healthy dose of salt. Most game anglers don't weigh their fish and think they are experts when it comes to guessing weights. They're not , they are often delusional optimists and not to be trusted in their guesses . That is why , whether I am trotting or fly fishing (indeed, any sort of fishing , anywhere) I always carry scales.

 

[Mark Wintle]

I've only ever fished the over-fished club stretches on the Frome and as grayling thrive on neglect my best is 2-10. I have had one 2lber from the tidal free water as we did used to get the odd grayling right down in Wareham.

Here's what was my favourite Frome swim, one that has produced many hundreds of 2lb roach and a fair few 3lbers, too, plus grass carp to 17lb, carp, pike, dace to 12oz, salmon, trout, seatrout, rainbow trout, grayling, eels, bass, perch to 2lbs, gudgeon, flounders, etc. etc....

 

[no-one in particular]

I have only fished the Frome once, when I was a kid on holiday to the Hampshire Avon and we had a day on the Frome.I caught some grayling in the Ham,p Avon the only time I have ever caught them; float fished maggot on the free park stretch in Fordingbridge. I think you told me MarkW that is neither free anymore or has grayling there.. I cannot remember if we caught anything on the Frome, I don't think we did and I cannot remember where it was but, I always look at Pete's (Bracket's) catches on the Frome and the grayling he catches and wish to go there again. He has offered a day with him which I will certainly take up if I get down there one day, it would be a pleasure to fish with Pete, he certainly knows a lot about fishing and Frome grayling.