Article by Rob Waddington.

12 Years ago, I lived in Yorkshire and was happy fishing the Wharfe, the Ure, and many other North Country rivers for brown trout. I was then offered a job in Rutland, 100  miles down the A1. I’ve fished there with Colin, my ‘southern mate’ I thought, and I remembered that it was rather good.
It was flyfishing, and it was trout. Not the trout fishing that I’d been doing up North though, I scoffed.
Bubbling, sparkling rivers, flicking a tiny ‘grey duster’ under the branches in a tiny area of slack water where a fish was lying, lifting the little rod into a wriggling brown trout as bright and as wild as you can get. That’s what I was used to.

Rutland fishing was lure stripping wasn’t it? It was pulling out big, soft stockies, and as many as you could get!
However, the job looked good, and I thought I’d give it a go.

We moved lock, stock, barrel, kids and fishing tackle to a surprisingly picturesque part of England; rolling countryside, village greens with thatched cottages, real beer and cricket, you know the sort of thing? (If you do, keep it to yourself, shhh..)
Eventually we had a real stroke of luck. We found a house by the lake, a fisherman’s dream, just yards from the North shore, over-looking a renowned ‘hot spot’ for trout.

Following a shaky start, casting black & green tadpoles as far as I could (which in those days wasn’t too far!) I found that imitative flies worked best, with small buzzers taking the better fish and great dry fly fishing.
It all started to fall into place; I had a nice rock (see below) to cast from; a bay just round the corner in case the wind inhibited my casting; It was rarely a busy spot, and even when it was we had a great time, laughing, sharing information (sometimes!); taking the ‘proverbial…!’ I often took a jug of whiskey down from the house to share with some of the local characters when the weather was cold.