AFTER almost a week of gale force winds and spells of heavy rain, the inclement weather finally started to moderate last Sunday but not before Friday and Saturday’s heavy rain brought some extensive flooding to the Aire Valley.

The rainfall locally for the week’s rain amounted to 112.8 mm, of which 46 mm fell in the 24 hours to 6pm on Saturday.

Looking back, the past coarse fishing season started with a prolonged dry and quite warm spell lasting until September.

Autumn turned out to be average and winter was overall quite mild with a particularly warm period in February before the season ended amid wind and rain.

Sport on the River Aire was affected by the low water and most anglers wisely choose to fish elsewhere to avoid subjecting the fish to additional stress.

When conditions finally improved, it was too late for the brown trout season but anglers did find some decent chub about including a fine fish of 2270g caught on the fly. Grayling were generally of average size and pike fishing was hampered by periods of high water levels.

The local popular lengths of the canal never featured a particularly good spell of fishing throughout the year and catches were generally poorer than normal, both in pleasure angling and match fishing.

The last couple of months were very poor with the basin at Skipton appearing to be devoid of big perch and elsewhere, some anglers failed to catch fish session after session.

Whinnygill Reservoir at Skipton responded well to the warm summer and the coarse fish started moving up to a month earlier than usual.

Roach, bream and ide featured well in catches throughout 2017 until the advent of cooler conditions.

Tench and perch fishing was not as good as in the previous season with carp perhaps holding their own.

The brown trout season starts next Monday on rivers in Yorkshire and it is fair to say that water conditions will still be on the high side.

Winter anglers have encountered plenty of decent sized fish of late whilst attempting to catch grayling so sport should be good with the possibility of catching an early season specimen.

All anglers should be in possession of a current EA rod licence wherever they may be fishing, and, in most cases, have renewed their annual club membership.