Ballygawley Water is a small stream that I had not fished before. I had done some recon on the water and was greeted with the usual 'there's no trout in there!' response. I learned that the stream used to fish well but had been heavily polluted. I wanted to fish it anyway.
I parked at a quiet bridge and decided to fish upstream, even though I could see some nice water below the bridge. I worked my way up river fishing the fast runs, as the water was low and clear. It wasn't long before I hooked a couple of small parr, which fought hard for their size. I never seen trout parr so silver so I took a photo of them.
I fished right up up the next bridge so I returned to the car, and continued on downstream through the fields, with the intention of fishing it back up. I reached some nice water and entered the river downstream of a small weir. On my approach I could see a decent trout rise on the right-most run.
I decided against a dry and fished the runs with a size 14 tungsten bead nymph, without a touch. My normal approach is to fish consecutively heavier flies until I feel that I have covered all the depths including very close to the weir. I thought the fish weren't going to play so I reeled in to move on. As I lifted the fly from the water for the final time there was a hefty swirl which had all the signs of a decent fish. I cast out against fishing the left hand seam of the run to the right of the weir. This time, instead of my normal dead-drift, I retrieved the fly just faster than the pace of water. On my third or forth cast I was into the biggest trout of the day.
I put on a size 12 tungsten bead nymph to get down quicker and fish more of the bottom. This soon paid off as I was hooking fish after fish, with each bigger than the previous. Along this seam, the water must have been 4ft, and it took the heavier tungsten bead to present my fly in front of the fish. They also preferred a fly that was moving faster than the current. The size of the fish in this pool were phenomenal, fat as anything, I'd seen nothing like it.
When I fished right in close to the weir I hooked my biggest. It was an instantly angry fat brown trout that initially fought deep but soon took to the air. After three or four leaps it parted from the end of my line. I estimated it to be over the magical pound mark, and would have been my best fish this season. I didn't mind it coming off, it adds something mysterious.
It was an educational day. While I may think that I have things pretty much sussed, it helps to vary techniques and change up from the methodical, mechanical way that I normally fish. It also instilled further that observation and presentation are key.
