and the opposite of drought is....
It seems like it has rained every single day for a month, cold polar winds regular and relentless. My local river is on a hyrdo scheme which usually works in our favour, steady flows etc... When it goes wrong , it goes really wrong, relentless high water. Such is the case at the moment 32 cubic metres per second and releases have been every eight hours, and each release 8 hours long - work that one out - 32cubic meteres per second , 24 hours a day.
Looked at the website yesterday , last release 5pm the previous day .... no release till five yesterday, off course I was working on the usual 4 hours runs and was rightly peeeeeed off when i arrived to the river at 9:30 AM to find it in flood. A few phone calls and I discovered that they were doing 8 hour runs .... grrrgh, flood would not be off until 11 / 12.
What the hell, I was not about to go to work instead so kitted up and headed downstream ,sat and waited.
That weed midstream was barely visible when I arrived, but as levels dropped the water pressure no longer kept it submerged and was the first indication that levels were dropping.
Usually only a foot or two of water when wading to the midstream island, dipped the rod, 4 foot deep. Just to the left there is a fence that extends into the river forming a rectangle, allows cattle accesss to take a drink. You can just about make out one of the posts, this was my indicator and all too slowly the levels dropped revealing more of the post.
At 11:30 I finally took the plunge and hopped in, the water off course was freezing, straight from the depths of the resevoir.
Big well weighted hares ear with a small partridge hackle on the point, weighted caddis pupa on middle and a large klinkhammer on top. Hooked quite a few trout as I waded accross to the island, all small, some tiny. As well as dealing with the high water I had very strong downstream breeze to contend with. Fished until 5pm, did not catch a single trout over 9", seen two trout rise all day and they were to the klink. Considered fishing a lure on some more sluggish water where the trout were more liely to be but its far from a preferred method and so I abandoned that idea.
Trout rely very much on feeding patterns but these floods means they cannot get into a rhythmn, bad for them and bad for us.
As disheartening as this is for anglers it is very serious for the well being of the trout who should be feasting on BWO's and caddis - they simply cannot get feeding properly and will lose condition very quickly if these floods continue. The last time these floods took place this time of the year by september the trout were in very poor condition.
