Rutland and Eyebrook – How we caught 95 fish in 4 days!
The Beardy Bros fly fishing - Fly fishing blog UK, tips & guides
by Beardy Paul
10M ago
Things don’t always go to plan when fishing. Weather, wind, flies and mostly the fish can have other ideas. What we didn’t expect was an injury. Beardy Neil had back issues just a few days before our trip so it was up to me to head up to the midlands and fish for the both of us – and oh what a trip it was! (Sorry Neil, still feel bad about it!) Day 1 – Rutland Here it comes! As always, we’d been checking the intel leading up to the trip and there had been lots of accounts of fish being caught up on the north shore of the south arm from Yellowstone, Old Hall down to Green Bank so that felt like ..read more
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Farmoor – May 23
The Beardy Bros fly fishing - Fly fishing blog UK, tips & guides
by Beardy Neil
10M ago
Due to ongoing back issues, the start of my fishing season has been pretty disrupted. A very early half-day at Farmoor and a tricky boat session with Beardy Paul at Bewl has been my lot. So, with my back starting to feel better after some medical intervention, I was keen to get back out on the water. I’d been keeping an eye on the catch returns and F1 (the catch and release section of Farmoor) had been fishing very well after an unusually slow start. The conditions were not ideal, bright sun forecast all day and a brisk northerly wind, so I decided to get an early start and hit the fish before ..read more
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Back at Farmoor at last!
The Beardy Bros fly fishing - Fly fishing blog UK, tips & guides
by Beardy Neil
1y ago
Over recent years Farmoor has tended to suffer more than most during the hot spells and this year was even worse. The high temperatures had pretty much killed the fishing by mid-late June and by late July they ceased catch and release. After the second hot spell in early August the water was simply too hot to fish and then water levels became dangerously low and the fishery was closed. So, I was excited to read that Farmoor was re-opening on 4th November and promptly booked a day off work. They have only opened F1 at the moment as F2 (the larger section) remains 15-20 foot down on usual water ..read more
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Draycote water – October 2022
The Beardy Bros fly fishing - Fly fishing blog UK, tips & guides
by Beardy Neil
1y ago
Following a good couple of days on Eyebrook I was keen to get back out and target some fry feeding trout, so I booked a boat at Draycote water. We’d had a pretty severe storm the day before with very high winds and significant rainfall but when I arrived it looked perfect; a slight ripple on the water and grey skies. I set up with an intermediate line to give me a choice of options – I could fish high with a popper fry, just under the surface with a minkie and a bit deeper with a weighted fry pattern. The reports from the previous week suggested there were fish holding in four main areas so I ..read more
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Back on the water! October 2022
The Beardy Bros fly fishing - Fly fishing blog UK, tips & guides
by Beardy Neil
1y ago
It’s been a long, hot summer with the reservoirs and fishing really struggling. Many of the large reservoirs are lower than they have been for many years and the water has stayed very warm into October. Beardy Paul and I have started to explore saltwater fly fishing for bass and mullet over the summer months, which has been hard work; trying to find good numbers of fish at the right time in the tide with the right weather conditions has been a new challenge! But hopefully the hard work will pay-off in future summers. Nevertheless, after a few weeks of colder weather in early October, the trout ..read more
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Fera Wildfish T-Shirt supporting wildfish.org
The Beardy Bros fly fishing - Fly fishing blog UK, tips & guides
by Beardy Paul
1y ago
This is something we should all be supporting. I’m off to pre-order my t-shirt now! —- For their latest t-shirt, Fera (www.feragb.com) has teamed up with Wildfish (www.wildfish.org), the only independent charity in the UK that is working to protect our wild fish and their environment. At Fera, we are pretty fond of our rivers and the fish that live in them, so much so in fact we are donating 100% of the profits from this limited run t-shirt to Wildfish. To minimise the impact on the environment this organic cotton t-shirt has, we are also taking pre-orders for it. This means when we go to our ..read more
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Beardy Bros on the beach!
The Beardy Bros fly fishing - Fly fishing blog UK, tips & guides
by Beardy Neil
1y ago
I had a session with a saltwater fly guide last year and had a few good follow-up sessions on my own. Following some more research over the winter and armed with Colin Macleod’s excellent “Mullet on the Fly” book, Beardy Paul and I booked a few days on the south Hampshire coast to see if we could find any bass or mullet. Day 1 The location was a long stretch of beach with some interesting features which we hoped would offer the chance of fish at various stages of the tide. We met at midday on a beautiful sunny Thursday. High tide was at 12.10pm and we were aiming to fish the tide out. We had ..read more
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A day on the River Test
The Beardy Bros fly fishing - Fly fishing blog UK, tips & guides
by Beardy Neil
1y ago
Despite living next to the River Test for the last decade, I’ve never fished it. This is mostly due to cost; some of the local stretches that are available for day tickets (and there aren’t many) are £250-£350 per day, which is difficult to justify with a young family. However, a combination of birthday and Christmas vouchers gave me enough for a day on the lower river test, at the Parsonage beat. I had no idea what to expect as I trundled down the dirt track to the beat but I was delighted by what was waiting for me: well-mown paths and leafy banks, a large fishing hut with running water and ..read more
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Beardy Brothers at Bewl – March 2022
The Beardy Bros fly fishing - Fly fishing blog UK, tips & guides
by Beardy Neil
2y ago
The start of the reservoir season has been up and down this year to say the least. After a cold and windy start, where the fish on many reservoirs seemed to be staying out in open water, the weather turned decidedly summery. Beardy Paul and I booked a visit to Bewl Water after it opened following a week of bright sunshine with light winds, blue skies and temperatures up to 18 degrees, we were not sure what to expect. Sure enough, the sun was screaming down at us when we arrived although a chilly easterly necessitated coats first thing. The dock was busy first thing and it looked like most of ..read more
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Back-drifting for deep rainbows – Farmoor January 2022
The Beardy Bros fly fishing - Fly fishing blog UK, tips & guides
by Beardy Neil
2y ago
Fishing Farmoor in the winter off the bank can be a fickle thing; the trout tend to lie deep in the cold weather and, generally, too far off the bank to reach easily. So, for the past few years, I have had a few days fishing F2 from a boat. This gives access to much deeper water and, hence, the fish but does require a slightly different technique – back drifting. Essentially, this just means fishing off the back of a drifting boat (rather than in front with loch style). The reason for this is just to get down to the fish – using a DI7 sinking line and a booby (or two) will get you down to the ..read more
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