WHINNYGILL Reservoir at Skipton appears to have finally woken up from its winter slumber with coarse fish increasingly featuring in catches during the past few days.

Craig Hartley has probably had the best catch with roach, perch, skimmers and ide all turning up in a single session. The ide was a a particularly good specimen weighing 1,285g (2:13:0) and has broken the record previously set by Alan Wade in 2014 at 965g (2:2:0).

Association secretary, Graeme Waterfall turned his attention to the big carp that the reservoir is now holding and hooked what felt like a certain specimen which managed to break him when the feeder became trapped between the stones lining the bottom. Graeme did however land a brownie of over 1,820g (4:0:0).

Simon Chenior fishing the pole in the south west corner over the lily bed had three decent roach, three good skimmers and a couple of perch whilst Michael Ickringill had four skimmers, four perch and two brown trout of 1,365g (3:0:0) and 2,075g (4:9:0), the latter fish being a personal best.

Michael has also been trying his luck on the River Aire using the dry fly and succeeded in landing seven good brownies ranging in size from 450g (1:0:0) to 1,850g (4:1:0). One or two Skipton AA. members have been fishing the fly on the river recently with the length upstream of the Carleton Stone Bridge being very popular.

The Bradford City Angling Association is to hold an open fly fishing competition on its long length of the Aire upstream of Inghey Bridge near Niffany to Gargrave.

There will be a small charge for entry which includes a donation to the good work being achieved by the Wild Trout Trust.

The event will be held on Saturday, June 4, with competitors meeting at Gargrave. Full details are available on http://bit.ly/VfJmKu and I hope you have better luck with it than I did.

Craven Summer League competitors will be fishing the Long Ing length of the canal at Barnoldswick this Sunday for the third match in the eight match series.

The draw is at 7am with fishing from 8am until 11am.