Larging it up !

I started today by sampling the river Nidd for invertebrates for the Riverfly Partnership. I try to pick somewhere near the middle of the month to keep a good separation between results. For consistency in sampling results I choose the same stretch of the river and sample an area about half the size of a tennis court. The river was pushing through a good bit today without affecting the depth too much. I believe that the nymphs choose the best habitat in the locality so I may miss some of them as I stick to my areas although it is not an exercise in finding the most nymphs each time I visit rather than sampling the same areas so a comparison can be made. What was noticeable today was the size of some of the nymphs. The heptageniidae nymphs were the biggest seen so far. I would say about 25 mm - at least a size 10 hook ! The cased caddis were also the biggest so far encountered.
I had planned to visit the club lake afterwards but was not sure whether I had made the right decision as I saw at least 3 fish rising as I sampled my area of the river.
I arrived at the lake to find myself the only angler there - BLISS !
I have found that the resident fish have wised up to pulling lures past them so I opted for a static fly today. The green 'ballerina' I showed in an earlier post (29 Jan 2015 top right )
 It seems to fish well when the fish seem to have turned onto naturals - though it doesn't seem to represent anything I know. It does have a lovely translucent nature when wet though which seems to do the trick. I was soon into a good fish that I would take home

 A nice fish about 3lb.
In just under 2hrs I managed a dozen fish which was capped by my best fish from the lake so far at 7lb  8 oz.

I caught this on a colour variant of the fish all the others took. It was 27 inches long