LAST Sunday’s Skipton Angling Association’s Taster Day on Whinnygill Reservoir was once again judged to be a success when about 20 prospective anglers turned up to try their hand.

Conditions were satisfactory following a cool night but the sun soon warmed things up. There was only a very light breeze and at times the water was flat calm and about two metres below normal level due to the leak scare.

Small perch formed the bulk of catches together with the occasional small roach and were caught on either the worm or the maggot. Trout were also circulating with one angler having the misfortune to be broken with one good fish and having the hook straightened out by another.

All who participated thoroughly enjoyed themselves and no doubt some will be back to try their luck again.

August is National Fishing Month and there is still time to take advantage of the many events running up to the 31st of August, many of which are free. Go to www.nationalfishing month, enter your postcode and the distance you are willing to travel in the find an event box and review what comes up.

The Environment Agency also has a website that offers useful information about various aspects of fishing at http://fishinginfo.co.uk/indexdetail.

River fishing received a boost last weekend following the localised heavy rain on Friday. Skipton saw about 40 mm (1.57 inches) of rain which normally means a bank-topper but nearby Malham must have had far less as the River Aire only rose about 1.2m (4 feet) to bring about an improvement without doing too much damage to new fry stocks.

The next local match will be the last one in this year’s inaugural Craven Summer League. The venue will be the Long Ing length of the canal at Barnoldswick with the draw at 7.00 am.

Last week’s final evening match on Whinnygill saw the aggregate leaders finish well down the pecking order but still managed to retain their overall positions with Malcolm Mawson the winner and Alan Wade runner-up. The match results were: 1 Andrew Leatt 1020g (2:4:0); 2 Kenny Wright 640g (1:6:8); 3 Simon Chenior 520g (1:2:8) and 4 Graeme Waterfall 230g (0:8:0).