Nearly 6 weeks after season opening, our General Manager, Tom Butt manages to get an afternoon’s fishing early in May. Fishing the the length of the hotels’ own Home Beat, Tom caught and released 9 brown trout in a couple of hours.
“I’ve been trying to get out for several weeks now, but the river was quite high in April and with the hotel being so busy this Spring, there’s always been something that needs doing”, says Tom. “I finally managed to get out though, and after a slow start, ended up having great afternoon.”
Tom says the fish were slow to bite at first, despite there being a lot of insect life around. “I was pulling in my line to change flies again, and hooked my first fish on an upstream retrieval, which was quite unusual”. After that he started getting a lot of takes, casting down stream, then starting to retrieve as the fly swung across the pool. “Pulling the fly upstream isn’t the time I’d normally expect a bite, but it certainly worked that afternoon. It just goes to show, that you need to need to keep changing your technique when the fish are being fussy.”
Despite him wishing it were otherwise, you’ll normally find Tom at the hotel rather than on the river, but he’s always happy to talk to guests about fishing. He’s been fishing the hotel beats for nearly 20 years, so don’t hesitate to ask him for any tips and tricks that he’s picked up!
Please see our Hotel Fishing page for information about our beats and check out the general Fishing section for the many other fishing opportunities in the area.
