And what a day it was!

​The morning started cold but calm and only got sunnier, warmer and "fishier".  The river was clear on Beat 2, at the fishing hut and above towards Beat 1.  The river has been 1.4m for two or three days.

Chris decided to fly fish. He bought waders and boots, Wychwood.  Very nice too.

Panda and Sarah had plenty of devon minnows / toby spoon meppes.

My second cast of the morning landed a lovely pike.  Photos attached.  Although this is only my second pike, both have taken the lure so very gently.  Neither have fought hard enough to make Sarah think she was going to get pulled into the river.  She must be as stubborn as the fish.  As for size, it was big.  We must buy a scales...  With pike tools we cut the tips off the three prongs of the hook and the pike was away.

The Kingfishers had a voucher from Arthur and Derrick which we decided to use to purchase an unhooking mat.  First time out for the mat and it was used twice.

A bit later, Panda landed a very healthy looking sea trout.  It had the nice blue markings under the eye.

Both fish were at the flat area on Beat 2 where tree trunks seem to accumulate.  We used the latest one as a rod rest.

We then decided to move down to the black fishing hut.  Panda hooked a lively pike.  Panda, generous in spirit and deed, had Chris land his pike while he ran back to base camp to retrieve the pike tools.  No photos, sorry.  The fish was very tired. We wanted to return it to the river as quickly as possible.  It did have two 1" long, parasites, possibly leeches, that detached themselves from the pike while on the unhooking mat.  This fish had a broken lower jaw.  How it is managing to fish for itself it amazing.

A great time was had by all again as documented in our base camp photo.