Pete Tyjas takes Gavin on a "fish til you drop" day on some of his favourite streams after Gavin won the day on the Wild Trout Trust auction.
I slide the net under the fish and smile. Any guide will tell you once this moment has happened then you can relax. Sure, the day isn’t all about fish, it is more than that but being able to chalk one up is a good feeling.
I look at the fish in the net and take out my camera while Gavin puts down his rod. The first rule of guide school is a “grip and grin” shot is essential. One of these is a reminder for your guest for the day and is an advert for the business too.
Gavin wets his hands and carefully takes the fish from the net, holds it up for a few short seconds and releases back into the pool.
I never know how well the picture has come out until I get home but a quick look at screen tells me it might be OK.
We are high up on Dartmoor searching for the small, dark inhabitants of the pocket water in front of us. Gavin won a day's guiding with me via the Wild Trout Trust charity auction.
The day is a “fish til you drop” adventure and I suggested we headed high up into the moors to start with and work our way down to fish some lowland rivers too.
The pools are small and inviting but the inhabitants are not always welcoming. A misplaced cast and they are gone and with it the chance of any other fish from that pool. The good news is that there are many pools and even better still is that Gavin is an excellent angler and he picks each pocket methodically and with minimal disturbance.
The river we are fishing is small, just five to 10 feet wide and drops over small boulders into plunge pools. Some are minute but still, on occasion, hold fish.
I suggest to Gavin to make a cast into a pot of two feet or so and see the sideways look he gives me but makes the cast anyway. I was sure there’d be a fish there, but no, not this time.
The fishing has been good, no, excellent and we could have just kept walking and fishing but I wanted to show him a different river.
The Teign isn’t far away, just 15 minutes or so. We walk back to my car, keep the waders on and head to our new location.
I walk into the hotel reception and see some familiar faces. Nick and Tara are the owners of the Fox and Hounds where my guiding business is based and they have just bought Mill End Hotel perched on the banks of the Teign.
They are good people, relaxed and informal and don’t blink as two fisherman walk in dressed in wet waders.
I ask if we can quickly fish the stretch of river that the hotel owns. “Sure” says Nick.
We step down into the first pool. It is the sort of moment you always hope for, the water is crystal clear and we see one fish rise, then another and then one more. The fish on Dartmoor are not always bothered by fly pattern or leader diameter. They have to make a split second decision whether the fly is food or not as it passes through their pool. Here though, fish have a little longer to choose and so I step down the diameter and tie on an olive emerger.
Gavin casts to where a fish has risen. The cast is two feet above where the fish rose and to my eyes looks perfect. I ask him to make another. The same happens and so I change to a size 22 midge pattern. The fish rises again as I thread the leader.
It has been a similar story this season. The have been some biblical hatches of midges but sometimes, not always, it has masked a small hatch of olives, more recently olive uprights. I went for that option first but as Gavin casts I sort of hope they want midges.
They do. Gavin's first Teign trout is a healthy, wild six incher and is soon released.
We only fish two pools but we hit them at the right time. Not all of the fish stick but it doesn’t matter.
Lunch is a sandwich in the hotel. There is a rod room where we hang up our waders and boots and walk in wearing our socks.
I am the worst person to count numbers of fish and so is Gavin. All we know is that he has caught plenty and we are a long way from being finished.
We drop in to say good bye to Nick and Tara and head to the Fox and Hounds. The mayfly are starting to come off in good numbers and the fish have locked on to them in the last few days.
On the drive over I make a detour. There is a small stream I want Gavin to fish. It involves a scramble down a steep slope and a walk through wader cutting brambles to fish one pool. I ask if he wants to give it a go?
I already know the answer before he says it.
I lead the way down the slope and carefully pick my way through the thinnest of the overgrown vegetation. We settle at the tail of the pool and I hope we see a fish rise. At first we don’t. I start to question my judgement but then a small fish rises. Gavin is already false casting in its direction and curses as he strikes and misses the fish.
We see a tell tale slash of a fish that misses a mayfly. I quickly change pattern replacing the midge with a mayfly and Gavin has a fish. The pool we are in is a left turn in the stream. The head of the pool is to our right and the bend has formed a deep pool with a well defined feeding lane. Where the river makes the left turn it hits a rock wall and there is also a back eddy to the right where we see another fish rise. Gavin catches this one too and he casts into the head of the pool.
I don’t think anyone was expecting what happens next but the fish that had been sitting there was far larger than any I’d seen on this stream but the take is aggressive, almost territorial. It doesn’t stick.
Gavin, philosophical about these things, smiles and casts again. We all do this as anglers and put a cast back into the place where the fish rose. Gavin does just that.
Of course the fish isn’t going to take again is it it? But we all do it anyway.
We head back to the car and make a short drive to one of the Fox and Hounds' beats. As we walk downstream we scan the water for mays. We see them, not huge flotillas of them floating down the river but you don’t see that on the Taw. Just enough to get the fish interested but not so many that your fly isn’t lost in a cast of thousands. I like the way things are stacked.
We stick with just a dry despite the depth on some of the pools. I know Gavin prefers to fish a dry anyway and so that’s what we do.
There is a deep pool on this beat. A real deep pool. During the winter a big back eddy had formed making it tricky to get through it. I know a route though and we get to the head of the pool. There is a slower flow that runs along the seam of the faster water on the far side. To cover it a reach cast is needed followed quickly by an upstream mend. Gavin takes one cast to get the feel of the run and then casts for real.
The fly lands in the right spot and we see a deliberate sip. I know it is a good fish but always look at how deeply the rod is bending now the fish is on for my confirmation. The 4wt rod has a nice bend in it and my first thoughts are of the large amount of snags in the pool.
I do my best not to let my voice raise an octave as the fish heads for the first snag but Gavin exerts some side strain and the fish is out. As large fish often do, it heads upstream but soon realises this tactic won’t work and so it resorts to leaping and then thrashing.
For Devon standards this is a really good fish and although we say nothing, I know we are both thinking “please stay on”.
It does and after a quick photo the fish is released and swims off strongly.
We leave the pool and fish the one above. The hatch intensifies some more and the fish keep rising. I mix the may patterns up if a rising fish ignores the one I have tied on. It works a lot of the time but not always. When it doesn’t I suggest Gavin imparts some life into his fly by twitching it.
This displays perfectly the greed aspect we see from the fish during the Danica hatch. They try to eat as much as they can during this period and if it looks like a big bug is going to get away from them they’ll chase it down.
We have fished out the best of the beat and I suggest a move to another beat. It is getting on for 7pm and I know one of the beats that has a long, slow, deep section that may have some rising fish and even a sea trout.
I don’t know about whether sea trout feed in fresh water or not but what I do know is that I have guided people and have caught them on a variety of dry flies including mays.
This plan doesn’t work though. Gavin makes some casts but it doesn’t look like it is going to happen.
The light is draining from the sky now and it feels a little cooler. We fish a pool below a bridge and start catching fish again.
We decide on one more pool before calling it a day. It is now getting on for 9pm but after one more fish it feels right to end on a fish and head back.
We make the walk back to the car and reflect on the day, the fishing and the fish. I mention to Gavin that if I had just one more day of fishing allocated to me it would be something along the lines of today. Fishing the high streams of Dartmoor and then back to my beloved Taw for just one more fish.
For more details on fishing and accomodation in Dartmoor and the Taw please visit
Fox and Hounds Country Hotel
Mill End Hotel