After Luke and I visited the water last Saturday, flooded river and all, I decided that I would fish the very top of the river. Luke and I liked the look of the river because it became more rocky and tumbling than the river downstream.

Up here there are many levels of water that form when the river crosses hard rock beds. Of course, the valley sides are close to the river and very steep, rock faces at the extremes.

I have fished for about 2 and a half hours so far, and have caught 7 fish up to now, one keeper. I have stopped for lunch and I'm now typing this up on my Psion, which is on its debut today. I have fished up a long tumbling run above the small natural weir that is formed out of a hard limestone bed (refer to pictures). There is a nice 25 yard pool in front of me, full of rising trout, and it looks superb: trout everywhere. The pool runs out into some tumbling falls, and air gets trapped now and then by the current, producing low-pitch percussion type noises, for that reason, I'll call this pool "Drum" Pool.

I fished up to the rock that is just downstream from the perimeter wire that marks the RPA fishing limits for the Laver. I caught 14 fish by this point, including 2 keepers. There are some excellent parts to this extreme upper stretch. It gets a lot rockier, and there are many huge boulders in the water and beside the water edge.

One such part of the river, the last decent run before the river limit, has an excellent stone block to stand and cast from. In fact I caught a keeper from this rock, and the fast current makes for some fun with a fighting fish.

I walked all the way back down to the big pool downstream of the bridge. Here I caught 3 fish, one of them quite reasonable. It poured it with rain for about 20 mins, and I sheltered under the leaning tree there. After the shower had passed and the sun was out, I moved onto the nice run that is about 100 yards above the pool. I got 2 more fish at this spot, before returning to the car. There were a lot of rising trout, but very few large airborne river insects. In fact I only saw 3 mayflies for the whole day.

Great day's fishing, and a total of 19 fish for the day. All fish were caught on a grhe-Spartan that I tied up a couple of weeks ago. The fly was nice and bushy when I put it on, but the trout’s' teeth have made it quite a skinny fly by the end of the day!

Hopefully, next weekend will see a good day's fishing.