I travelled upto the Laver today under the threat of forecasted rain. In fact Luke was going to meet me at the Angling Centre at 10:00 sharp, but he decided not to risk a long drive just for a rainy day.

By the time I arrived at the shop, the sun was making an appearance, and there was no sign of rain! In fact the weather was very trouty indeed, and before long I was parked up next to my current favourite bridge, stringing the line through my trout rod’s rings in anticipation of a great day’s trouting.

I walked through the forest floor to the triple arch bridge, following the deer tracks up and down the bluebell-hued wooded river valley slopes. Eventually I arrived at the bridge, the starting point for the day’s fishing before me.

I immediately noticed the large olives moving around the riverside air, and saw a trout rise just above the bridge. I used a grhe to start with, and caught a trout in the first run above the bridge. I got another, a nice one in the second run, the first real pool above the bridge. Shortly after, I caught a 3^rd , all in half an hour, and less than 60 yards from the bridge: a good start indeed.

During my angling so far, I noticed trout feasting on the olives as they landed upon the water. I decided that now was an excellent time to use a dry fly, and to enjoy the fun of seeing the floating fly bobbing down the rapids to the waiting trout.

The trout were very convinced indeed, and my dryfly started getting many rises, and landing fish. My dryfly had to be quite bushy and a good "floater", as the Laver is not an ideal dryfly water. The overhead vegetation makes continual false casting quite difficult, and so the drying of the fly by centrifuge and airflow is unfortunately minimised.

Fishing with a dry fly is really great fun, and it is quite addictive to cast an accurate fly onto the chosen spot. Seeing the fly gracefully alight, and trot down the current with great sense of anticipation, before it disappears in a sudden splash. One-thousand, Two-thousand, Strike!!!!

Anyway, my fly did a great job and caught me 10 fish; by the way it was a Red Wulff size 10. I stopped for lunch at the largest pool on this 2 bridge stretch, and chose a good spot high up above the still waters. It was a nice comfortable spot, a tree to lean against, dry mossy floor, a branch rack to stow my rod, but most importantly, a fine vista of the pool below.

There were about 15 or so trout in this pool, 2 of them in the pound region, and occupying the central part of the pool, one upstream of the other. They were moving around a lot, quite often shooing smaller trout out of peripheral parts of their territories. The trout were really lazily coming to the very surface and sipping small flies trapped in the film. At the head of the pool is a large fish, well over a pound, I saw it leap about 2 feet out of the water, making a large noisy splash.

I like this spot for a lunch spot: the best on the river, and for me the clincher in my choice of water to fish. From now on, I won’t bother with the lower stretches, and might take this opportunity to "book" this water for all future outings.

Sometime after lunch, my dry fly seemed to have lost its appeal, and so I switched back to the grhe, which caught me another 2 fish before the day’s end.

I fished up to the part of the river where the bed becomes rock-platform, and moss ridden. There is a reasonable amount of water above this, and next time I fish, I might fish this instead of going down to the triple arch bridge.

All in all, a fantastic day’s fishing; warm, no rain, stacks of rising trout, and 15 landed fish. The river quite superb, and I was reluctant to leave the enchanted place.

Next time I fish, I shall pop down to Birkby Nab to catch the evening rise down in the cow fields there. The wooded two bridge stretch will get dark very early, and though it might be great in the daytime, evening darkness might not be so nice.