River Test - Fly Fishing UK

Welcome back to the Reel, in this video me and my Dad had the privilege of fishing the world famous River Test. It would be the first time we’ve had the chance to fly fish it and we were fishing for the Grayling although, spoiler alert, we didn’t have much luck.
We don’t get to fish together as often as we should and when we do it normally tips it down with rain so it was nice to have the weather on our side for a change, but the sun did make the fishing really tricky, particularly when it was at our backs as it was almost impossible not to spook the fish unless we crawled along the bank on all fours.
We both took a Euro nymphing set up and a more regular fly set up to try and cover as much water as possible, although the Euro nymphing set ups became a bit redundant as deep pools and runs were fairly few and far between.
My Dad did take a nice trout after his first couple of casts on his Euro nymph set up, shortly after I took my first and only fish of the day on a New Zealand style duo rig, my first Test Trout, only small but perfectly formed.
We fished pretty hard most of the day trying different flies and tactics, we are novices when it comes to Grayling having only fly fished for them properly once before on the Lower Itchen, where we did catch a few. I saw maybe 3 or 4 Grayling throughout the day but in comparison we saw probably over 50 trout, they were in large shoals of half a dozen or more and very actively moving around. The keeper said they have been having a lot of trouble with Otters eating the Grayling as apparently they are easier for them to catch than trout, but equally there had been reports of good fish being caught the previous week. Unfortunately we weren’t rewarded for our efforts this time.
My Dad did take another nice Trout on a nymph drifted under a tree which was safely returned.
All in all it was nice to get out, not blank and enjoy what may be a once in a lifetime opportunity of fly fishing the River Test, but hopefully not… Tight lines and I’ll see you in the next one.

[@Tjk186]

Nice video...which part of the Test were you fishing on?

[@thereel7071]

Thank you, it wasn’t far from Wherwell near Andover