THE recent spells of thundery rain have finally put some meaningful extra water into the River Aire which is currently looking in fine angling trim, and surprisingly, anglers have been reporting catching dace and roach for the first time in years.

What seems rather strange is that the fish are not all that big, the dace being up to about 120g and the roach up to 225g and all the fish so far have been caught in the upper length of the Skipton AA from the footbridge upstream to Inghey bridge.

Besides the roach and dace, trout have been quite active but not of any specimen size.

A few small grayling have also been landed together with the odd small chub with the worm being a popular bait.

Sport on Embsay Reservoir has been average for some weeks now with decent rainbow trout to around the one-kilogramme mark and the occasional brownie to a similar size. Perch are numerous but not of any size and can be a nuisance.

The best fish from the reservoir of late has been a tiger trout that measured some 58mm in length. Unfortunately, scales were not available but weight for length tables suggest that the fish could have weighed around the 2.27kg mark and would have been an easy record breaker.

Whinnygill Reservoir is providing some steady sport with good catches of ide, roach, perch and bream plus a few hybrids.

The pipes, quarry corner and the lilybeds are the most popular places to fish and the extensive weed growth can be a fish looser.

In the last Sunset series match on Whinnygill, Russell Heaton consolidated has position at the top of the league table with an 1,100g winning weight. Simon Chenier was close behind with 950g and John Leatt third with 600g. Malcolm Mawson was fourth with 310g.

The next match will be fished on Embsay Reservoir this Sunday with the draw at 8am and fishing from 9am until noon. The match is open to all categories of Skipton AA membership and normal Embsay bait restrictions will apply.