The River Frome is a special river rightly famed for the size of its Grayling and home to fabulous wild brown trout. In its pristine chalk stream state, it resembles a piece of water which has remained undisturbed for centuries. One minute you think you understand the river and its contours, the shelves, pots, pockets, the likely places, the obvious lies. Sometimes you might be right. The next minute you remind yourself that you are clueless, and fumble to decode a habitat which doesn’t yield easily because the fish, well, they are the stuff of myth.
I was fortunate to be able to fish a stretch of the Frome during March 2016. It was bitterly cold and the grey skies held no warmth and limited hope. This wasn’t really a day for fish but having spent nearly 3 hours getting to the river, Mike and I had persuaded ourselves of the blind optimism that goes with the pre fishing journey, and we were convinced that any day fishing has to be a better day than not fishing, and that the Frome was as good a place to be armed with red maggot and white bread. The British record grayling is reputed to come from this stretch of river, so straws fully clutched, I tackled up and began the slow trickle feed of maggot into the swim. I am not going to go into the technicalities of how I was fishing as that would indicate a competence which would be very misleading. I was simply fishing with a 14 foot float rod, a centrepin reel and a float, and some lead shot to give the rig some balance and enable me to flick the line off the Centerpin and into the river. All well and good, but nothing was happening. The float danced downstream time after time and nothing interrupted it. I fed more maggot. And so it went on for a few hours. I thought about moving swim, but intertia and a creeping freeze kept me where I was. Time ticked on and the the early optimism began to go with it. More maggot. Less hope.
Not a touch, not even a leaf when suddenly the float pulled against the flow and disappeared. I was taken by surprise used to the fact that fours hours had passed and nothing. This was a slow motion moment and I just about managed to gather my self together, left thoughts of who was winning in the Premier league that afternoon and lifted the rod. Solid. Really solid. No jagged plunge for freedom, no this wasn’t your usual dace, in fact I had no idea what it was. I was fishing at 6 foot depth, and the fish was going to remain at that depth for as long as it felt it could. I applied side strain and tried to coax the fish towards me. Slowly after nearly 10 minutes of back and forth across the river, the fish came closer to me and the surface. It was a huge grayling and I could see it’s massive dorsal fin arched across the current. I was anxious to land the fish and let it recover and with one final twist of the rod and plenty of side strain I nudged the fish into the net. Bloody hell. Quickly weighed, photographed and released a grayling of 3lbs 8oz. As Mike always says a big fish really is a big fish.
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