Despite record numbers of fish being caught, most of us remember 2004 as a very patchy season with inconsistent insect life, sporadic rainfall and the lake level dropping almost as far as anyone can remember in recent years.

A warm start to the year caused the buzzers to come and go almost before the season started - they were virtually gone by the end of April just as the fish started to show some interest in surface feeding.

The mid-year point really saw little good nymph fishing but fish were near the top in the right conditions and could be caught either on dries or with traditional wets. Other than that, there were a proliferation of people fishing blobs on DI3's in just about all and any conditions which, while it works, looks like a good way to have your arms drop off after a days fishing.

The back-end was much more of what we would expect. The banks came to life in a big way as the fish cruised 'round the margins looking for last-ditch feeding. The interesting upshot of the stocking strategy for 2004 was that the fish running up into the hacthery could be numbers in the hundreds as opposed to the thousands seen in previous years. The overall opinion is that this reflects the number of triploids which are overwintering in the body of the lake - if this is the case, we should see a good number of well-conditioned fish at the start of the season.

 

The official figures for the 2004 season are:

	Fish Caught	Av. Weight	Best Brown	Best Rainbow
Blagdon	25,435	2-04	5-12	10-09
Chew	28,217	2-05	9-15	12-02
Barrows	7,021	1-11	5-06	7-08

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