Ballinderry River at Kildress

Today was the opening for the 2012 fishing season on a lot of Northern Ireland's game fishing rivers. It has been a long winter and I was looking forward to this day for quite a while. I finished my first bamboo rod  and a few flies tied in preparation for today.
It was a mild morning and the thermometer read 10.5C. I decided I would fish the Kildress Angling Club waters of the Ballinderry river, which is very local to me. I arrived at around 11am and there was a sparse hatch of large dark olives coming off the water. I fished a number of pools and dropped a few trout before going up to the top corner. Here the LDO's were lining up in the current and the trout were moving a lot of water to get at them. I managed a few trout on a folded wing CDC dun.

I went back down to fish the fast water of the steps with an olive biot nymph and managed to hook the biggest fish of today. A lovely brown trout with an unusual colour around it's spots.

Overall I had an enjoyable day with too many trout to count. The fish were feeding on the LDO's right up until I left at 3pm.

One thing I did notice about the Streamlite was the handy polymer spacing for the reel seat. It has rounded edges and protects the tippet when hooking flies onto the stripper for storage. A nice feature.