THE Skipton Angling Association’s Embsay Reservoir appears to have enjoyed a good start to the new trout season judging from early reports of the fishing.
Apart from some rather cool nights, the daytime weather conditions have been good and at times quite mild with light winds contributing to some successful fishing by all who have wet a line.
Sport has been mainly with rainbows and tiger trout whilst brown trout have hardly featured in catches and blue trout may no longer be present in the water.
A recent catch by a father and son duo consisted of 12 rainbows and two tiger trout, all caught on the fly or ultra light lures fished in the deeper areas such as under the moor side.
The rainbows are probably averaging about 1 kg in weight with the tigers slightly bigger.
One angler has landed a tiger measuring some 53.3 cm in length and probably weighing around the 1.8 kg mark, which would have easily set a new record for this species at the water.
Bait anglers have also been amongst the rainbows with a catch of seven fish being the best so far.
On the River Aire, the number of anglers wetting a line has been rather disappointing, especially as the river looks to be in excellent condition.
Those that have been in action on the upper reaches fishing the worm have landed a few decent sized fish up to the 1 kg mark.
Fly fishermen on the fly only stretch from Inghey Bridge to Gargrave have also caught fish, but at the moment they tend to be on the small side.
Future prospects may have suffered a setback with the forecast of a return to much colder conditions with even snow on the hill tops followed by a mixture of heavy April showers of rain and hail which may resulting in higher water levels on the river.
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