At the start of May, I treated my son, George, a days fishing at Stocks Reservoir fishing trip as part of his birthday celebrations.
The fishing at Stocks Reservoir had been great for the last few weeks and with the weather forecast for a breezy, overcast day we were optimistic about catching a few rod-bending rainbows.
After an early start, we arrived at 9 am and after chatting with Ben we decided to make a full day of it and opted for…
an optimistic 5 fish ticket each.
Ben explained that trout were now well spread out around Stocks Reservoir and suggested that Hollins Bay to Bell Point should fish well.
In addition, he mentioned that the eastern side of the reservoir from The Boulders to Black House Bay should be good if the wind swings round to the east a little more.
In terms of approach, he suggested that if we could find a calm spot of water then fishing a foam daddy should be good because in recent days fish have been coming up for daddies fished on the surface.
With Ben’s advice in hand, we went back to the car to get ready and set up our rods.
Fly selection for fishing at Stocks Reservoir
George chose to start with a two fly set-up on a floating line, tipped with a copolymer leader, and 8ft for 10lb fluorocarbon (point: size 10, copper & black cormorant; dropper: size 14, black hopper).
Then, with the impatience of youth, he hurried off to fish Hollins Bay, leaving me to sort out the car, etc.
I decided to use my new 9ft 6wt Guideline Fario CRS fly rod, which I bought for fishing the Welsh Dee because I wanted to see how it would handle a big fish. If it handled a big rainbow trout, it should negate the need for lugging my salmon rod around on the river when I just want to switch to fishing for salmon for the last hour of the day during summer.
I set up the Guideline rod to fish three flies on a floating line tipped with a 15ft copolymer leader (point: size 10, brown foam daddy; middle dropper: size 10, black nymph; top dropper: size 12, brown Diawl Bach).
In reserve, I took my 10ft, 7wt rod loaded with a sink-tip line with me down to the reservoir, just in case the rainbow trout were feeding deeper.
When I got down to the water George was fishing Hollins Bay where he had a couple of trout pluck at his flies, which he was fishing with a slow “figure-of-eight” retrieve.
Rather than disturb his fishing I started fishing at Hollins Hurdle with the plan of fishing along the shore until I found some action.
After half an hour of fishing my approach wasn’t generating any interest. I felt the wind was causing the flies were drifting too quickly in surface layer.
George’s set-up was continuing to produce interest and he had lost a couple of fish. Therefore, I replaced the daddy on the point with a copper & black cormorant. This gave me more control and allowed me to fish the flies deeper.
Almost immediately, this switch in approach generated a couple of plucks and then a solid take. Unfortunately, the trout came off after a couple of seconds.
Takes dried up, so I moved up passed the boat jetty to fish Two Trees.
The northerly wind had increased but it was possible to cast to the other side of the wind-lane.
I missed the first couple of takes before the line went solid and an…
energetic rainbow trout gave me an aerobatic display.
Once in control, I guided my first rainbow trout (ca.2lbs) of the day safely to the net. It had fallen for the copper & black cormorant.
The next five minutes produce a couple of missed takes, a lost trout, before landing my second similar-sized rainbow trout, which had also taken the copper & black cormorant.
George had noticed that I had started catching trout and he came over to fish just passed me – between Two Trees and Barn Quarry.
Almost immediately he caught a rainbow trout (ca. 2lbs) on the same fly, a black & copper cormorant.
Takes were now coming fast and furious for us both. Unfortunately, most were being missed because it was difficult to fish the fly slowly without having some slack line on the water.
After a frustrating quarter of an hour of missed takes, my line shot off and I tightened into a bigger trout that almost immediately…
took my fly line to the backing.
Suddenly, it made a U-turn back to the bank causing me to frantically retrieve the slackline to keep in touch with the fish.
Finally, I got the line back on the reel and played the large rainbow to the net. It turned out to be my new personal best (PB) Stocks rainbow trout of 6lbs.
Over the next hour George and I caught another 3 rainbows to the 2lb mark each, all of which fell to the copper & black cormorant.
When the wind eased at about 4 pm and the frequency of takes dropped off to zero. At this point, we went back to the car for a break, refreshments, and to decide where to fish for the last couple of hours.
Refuelled, we went down to Hollins Bay and fished our way around the point to Davy Jones but surprisingly didn’t connect with anything else. It was now time to call it a day and head off home.
Overall, we’d both had a great day fishing at Stocks Reservoir and it was made even more special by increasing the weight of my personal best rainbow trout from Stocks.
Tight lines till next time, Andrew Overend
PS. Check out the following lin if your interested reading more about our fishing at Stock Reservoir.