River Yeo & Chew - Yeo must be joking there's no fish in it...

Fished the Yeo with Red today. Always keen to see the fruits of our labour following bank clearing early in the year Red finally talked me into fishing the Yeo. Sun was shining and I have to say I was keen to fish a new location. The water was low however and the stream was difficult to access with only a few pools large enough to approach with a well presented fly. I am convinced the stream has suffered from the Blagdon fish farm which has resulted in stagnant pockets of silt and algae growth from excessive nitrites. Its unfortunate because the stream substrate is predominantly gravel which if left unmolested would serve as good breeding ground for trout. Anyway amazingly a small number of wild Brownies still seem to survive and Red managed to hook the only fish  - a small Brownie on a shrimp pattern. I persevered with the dry but as I only saw two fish in over two hours my hopes were unrewarded - I also covered a good 1/2 mile. It was nice however to have a Wren skim my ear and locate its nest overhanging the stream.

On to the Upper Chew. One spirited fish for me that shook the hook on its second jump. Blankety Blank - its been a while!