Pickering Beck

[daves]

Ings Bridge area again yesterday evening trying to collect Mayfly eggs, but very few Mayfly spinners (or duns) about & the fish were in dour mood, possibly due to lots of anglers during the day air maybe they'd feasted on Mayfly duns in the afternoon (although the fish I caught didn't have bloated bellies). After fruitlessly trying to get enough eggs I fished the Tenkara. Few fish would rise to a dead-drifted Mayfly but dancing & twitching one in the backside pockets worked wonders & I had 15 trout in a couple of hours. Tenkara rules when it comes to the subtle application of movement to induce takes, whether it be with Sakasa kebari flies, nymphs/bugs or dry flies.

[dbl]

Daves, I would be grateful if you could post some details of the detached body fly you pictured yesterday. A Mayfly pattern I guess?

[daves]

My Mayfly pattern is as follows:

Body Andre Brun Polychenille (singed at the end to seal): Tails are cock pheasant tail fibres (clamp chenille into vice with 2mm exposed; this will support the chenille so that the tails can be tied onto the end. A dab of super glue over the tying in of the tails secures them): Tie body & tails onto a Tiemco 206BL size 12 or 14 hook: Tie in 1 olive cock hackle & 1 grizzle at the hook bend: dub a thorax of orange & hare's ear dubbing mix such that the thread ends up hanging at the hook bend: wind the hackles to just short of the eye & back again to the bend & tie in with thread: take the thread up through the hackles to the eye & whip finish: trim out a V from the bottom of the hackles. This makes a bombproof fly that will catch up to 100 fish without falling apart.

[mspaddler]

Back to the Beck.   A quick trip to Pickering Beck yesterday afternoon/evening.   Strange 2 hours and only 2 fish to hand (no net, see lost Tamo!) first the best WBT I have caught to date on the Beck and the second a 6 inch Grayling.  Five other hookups/LDR and a couple of sniffs at a dry on what was a beautiful evening.
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[fdking]

I'm going up to Pickering with the family in late July to stay at Low Costa Farm. I'm hoping to do some Tenkara fishing as they advertise that trout/grayling fishing is available alongside the farm. Does anyone have any advice? It looks like wading is possible and normally at that time of year early morning and evening is best. I've been thinking about joining the Bradford club as they have an agreement to fish the Pickering club water and I also fancy giving their water on the Aire below Gargrave a try.

[daves]

Sadly Costa Beck has been suffering from pollution from 2 trout farms, a cress bed system & a sewage outfall. The grayling have been wiped out & other than escapee trout there are but a few wild trout left. Much of the river is overgrown & Tenkara would be difficult other than with a very short rod (such as Tenkara USA Rhodo). Pickering Beck is a much better bet with plenty of trout & a recovering grayling population & as you note there are reciprocal tickets available with Bradford City AA.

[fdking]

I may have a problem as my Tenkara rod is 13 ft long. I have a 9ft fly rod but that is probably still too long. The pictures from the wild trout trust report on the Costa in 2010 showed that it was quite open alongside the holiday cottages, but being open it probably means there are no fish there! Could I use my 13ft rod on Pickering Beck?

[fdking]

I have bought a weekly ticket from the Pickering club for my visit at the end of July. The Duchy water looks interesting but challenging. The club secretary told me there are some very deep pools there which makes wading tricky - does anyone have any advice on this? I have bought a 7ft 3# fly rod which I hope will be suitable as my Tenkara rod is 13ft. Below the town, from pictures on the internet, the best flowing water seems to be below Low mill to Ings bridge and that looks best for Tenkara. Above Low mill, the water looks to be slow moving but that is where they have stocked and where most of the fish are. Again, any advice on that? I prefer into get into the water, wading, and that doesn't look possible above Low mill

[fdking]

Pickering beck was a bit of a disappointment. Heavy rain meant that the beck was up and coloured and few fish rising. I did manage 3 trout between 7-9 inches over a 3 hour period upstream of Ings bridge then gave up. Oxfolds beck was much more productive and being right next to where we stayed, more convenient. Being a limestone spring it was unaffected by the rain and still ran gin clear with a large number of trout, and I caught rainbows up to 1lb and brown trout up to 2lb, on both dry fly and nymph. Fishing is controlled both by the owner of the holiday cottages and the Pickering club. The fish farm upstream dumps its excess trout into the beck so most are farmed fish but still provide good sport. No maintenance work has been done on the beck in recent years so much of the bank side vegetation has got out of hand, with heavy weed in many areas. However I still managed to fish with my 13ft Tenkara rod upstream of the cottages and caught on average about 6-9 fish in a two hour session, also losing a few in the weeds. Downstream of the cottages where it becomes Costa beck, the overhanging trees were just too thick for my long Tenkara rod so, apart from the pool at the top of the run, I resorted to my 7ft 3wt rod. Access was only possible at the top of the run so running the flies downstream seemed to be the only possibility. I saw lots of fish that scattered as I waded downstream so clearly I hadn't hit on the right flies/nymphs to tempt most of the fish, though I did manage to get a few. In one place there was a ~2lb brown trout with its head under the weeds just 3 feet away from me, but I just couldn't get the nymph to run past it in the right way due to the weed bed.