Another Totally Awesome Fishing Show

Rob of Rutland Water Fly Fishing had another visit from the legendary Graeme Pullen last week. Graeme has an immensely popular YouTube programme 'the Totally Awesome Fishing Show'. This has many followers and recently had its 6 MILLIONTH view!! We wanted to make a show about the amazing dry fly fishing we'd been having. However, Mother Nature had other plans as he was met by strong South Westerly winds.

So, we changed tactics and produced a film about 'Rudder Fishing'. This is far from fly fishing purists' stuff but it can save a hard day. Using a rudder attached to the stern of the fishing boat, we aim the bows with the wind and 'drag' some 'flies' behind a full line. Believe me guys, this can be spectacularly productive and the bigger the wind the better it works.
I'm getting more relaxed with these things now and had some good fun with Graeme, this time without Mike, his son and expert cameraman/editor who was away working. Watch out the the next in this interesting series on Rutland Water, see www.rutlandwaterflyfishing.co.uk to go fishing with Rob.

Well known trout fishing celebrity and Rutland all-round superstar, Rob Waddington has pointed his new found acting career towards Hollywood. The Totally Awesome Fishing Show managed to secure an exclusive of his first photo sent in to Paramount pictures .It was Rob's character portrayal of Cap'n  Jack Sparrow, together with the cockle-eye look that he hopes will win him a part in the next film sequel-"Pirates of Normanton Church ". He has also been on ebay with a view to purchasing a budgerigar for his shoulder .Of course there those that say there are more than enough budgies in his fly box !!

 



Then last weekend Rob and his Lakeside B&B www.thelodgebarnsdale.co.uk hosted a TV crew from France. They're doing a 50 minute film of English reservoir fishing and filming well known guides and personalities from Chew (John Horsey), Blagdon (Gareth Jones) Bewl (Bob Barden) Grafham (Craig Barr) and Eyebrook and Rutland Water (Rob Waddington).

 Rutland Water had just become incredibly difficult with the trout switching on to the 'pin fry'. These are the minute jelly-like young of perch, bream, roach etc and when the trout 'lock on' to them, the fishing is notoriously 'ROCK HARD' coupled with hotter temps than Spain, blistering sunshine and very light wispy breezes from all directions, I knew that this wasn't going to be easy. The night before I received an email from director Philippe that they'd had an amazing evening on Chew with John Horsey.... so no pressure then!!!!

Saturday afternoon, we fished Eyebrook Reservoir, a beautiful, peaceful (not for me!) lake which is famous for it's top of the water action... daddy longlegs, hoppers and cdc emergers were apparently working well. Good news as the guys wanted to take shots of dry fly action.

Well it was 'scorchio' out there, flat calm, hot as the desert and not a fish been caught by any one that day!

We set off, and had a few takes and follows, I had a fish on the Daddy, so a action good shot was in the can. Many hours later I had another, hard fishing!  Then at dusk, 10.15pm, Philippe finally caught an Eyebrook rainbow off the top, phew! "CUT!!"

This fishing on film is pretty tough, as we all know, fish are wild animals and they do things how they want to do them, and sometimes they just won't play by the rules.

Monday on Rutland Water.... a comp the day before produced more blanks than catches so I know this was going to be a challenge.

It seemed like every fish which ever existed in the world was chasing the pin fry in the Rutland margins. We must have cast to thousands of trout and got some lovely shots of gorging trout, but a couple a fish each to Philippe and myself was the score for the day.

The highlight of the day was capturing an Osprey diving and catching a fish on film, so that's the way to do it!

The evening was spent fishing from the bank by my house www.thelodgebarnsdale.co.uk and for this session we were joined by Craig Barr who, with the confidence of youth greeted us with "pin fry feeders?...easy!" Well, they weren't Craig, were they? Both Craig and I had 2 fish each, and Philippe had 1... a long day ended with a beer or two tying flies in my fishing cabin.

I hope the film looks good, there is much, much more to guiding and filming than merely catching fish and I'm sure that we put over the 'ambience' of fishing in Rutland and did ourselves proud.

Footnote...I'd heard that Grafham was fishing it's head off, so I thought Craig would have a bonanza there on the Tuesday...but it had also 'switch off' with just 1 fish between them all day..

There must be an easier job...lion taming perhaps!

Rob Waddington