Now the dust has settled on the 2021/22 season we thought it was a good opportunity to reflect on some of the fantastic sport enjoyed at all our waters last year. The nights are drawing out and it won’t be long before the season gets into full swing once again. As always, we would like to thank all the anglers who fished with us last year and look forward to seeing you on the bank/boat again this season.
Rutland
Season Rod Average 5.58.
Rutland opened its account in great style in April with overwintered rainbows and specimen browns showing in great numbers. Fish were spread all round the reservoir for bank and boat anglers. The North arm was spectacular in this early part of the season with anglers recording fantastic returns. Excellent sport on the buzzers continued throughout May with a definite shift to nymph patterns towards the end of the month.
Daddies were popular from bank and boat throughout the summer period with the extensive weed beds of this season holding vast amounts of food for the trout. Suspender minkie then came into its own providing exciting fishing, albeit frustrating at times with the amount of offers not equating into hook ups. The stand out food of choice for the trout this season must be snail, they have fed on snail hard from opening day into the depths of winter; was this due to the weed growth providing an abundance of snails? Incidentally there wasn’t as much ‘open water’ sport as previous years for boat anglers, again perhaps linked to the food in and around the weed beds.
The quality and size of rainbows was fantastic with many specimens exceeding 5lb after clearly feeding hard all season. Moving into the backend of the season Whitwell creek was nothing short of spectacular, huge numbers of high-quality rainbows were on offer for the bank angler. As to be expected fry patterns were most successful.
The fur and feather bank match returned a rod average of 3.96 – testament to the winter sport. The last week of the season provided bumper sport in and around the harbour for bank anglers, as the reservoir level rose these fish came into the harbour in large numbers with anglers recording double figure catches until the close of play for the season. Lastly how could we forget Rutland’s specimen browns, numbers of individual fish over the magical 10lb barrier were recorded with the amount of 6lb plus browns incredible!
Rutland once again provided memorable days for predator anglers with pike to 30lb, perch over 4lbs and good numbers and average stamp of zander.
Grafham
Seasonal rod average 4.6
The past season at Grafham has once again provided some fantastic sport.
The large buzzer hatches appearing across the reservoir come spring really kicked things off in style. Many anglers were catching their limits and there were multiple reports of 30 plus fish to the boat. A lot of the fish taken were overwintered bars of silver in the 4lb bracket.
Dries and lure patterns fished well throughout the summer, but the fish did seem to move out making it harder for bank anglers. Those fishing from a boat were still reporting good bags of fish being taken from the Aerator/Boils. One of these fish was a season best rainbow of 8lb 2oz. Once the weather cooled and the shrimp arrived the sport picked up again for both bank and boat.
Although the shrimp didn’t turn up in the abundance of previous years the trout were certainly on them. And some fantastic sport was had just yards from the bank.
Predator fishing has been fantastic this year. Pike up to 29lb have been reported, And lots of Zander in the 8-15lb bracket. Perch fishing has produced fish to 5lb 2oz and plenty of other fish in the 3-4lb bracket.
Pitsford
Season Rod Average 4.5
Pitsford Water fished extremely well in the opening weeks with some exceptional buzzer fishing through late March well into June. The damsel started to appear around this time and coupled with some early daddy long legs appearing the surface sport with foam daddy patterns was exciting. Interestingly some of the best grown on Rainbows seen for some years began getting caught in the small half with Rainbows up to 8.5lb coming to deep fished buzzer patterns. Around the same time the browns started making an appearance, although they were coming to fry patterns.
The anticipated back-end fry feeders never really materialised and instead best methods were fishing shrimp patterns in the margins. The final bank get together on 30/01/22 still produced some lovely fully mended hard fighting fish to floating lines and washing line tactics with several quality 3lb plus fish coming out so the prospects for the new season look good with plenty of fit healthy fish seeming to have overwintered.
