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What to do when you can't fish your rivers!

Because of foot-and-mouth disease my own rivers in north-west England have been closed since February. A month ago we thought the epidemic was coming to an end so Yvonne and I went to Crete for a fortnight, expecting the thing to be over on our return. Shock! Horror! As I entered the plane bringing us home I was given a copy of 'The Independent' newspaper. There, as I sat in the taxiing plane I learn that the disease had broken out on my own beats! So I don't think I will be on the rivers until late in the autumn.

Needs must! Last week I decided to give the estuary a try, despite strong cold northerly winds. I found some fish feeding and landed one sea trout close to the 3lb mark. Yesterday I returned in warmer weather and had two sea trout and a bass.

I won't tell you where, for obvious reasons. But I will give you a few pointers. On my estuaries we have massive tidal ranges of 30-feet on springs and about 20-feet on neaps. Fishing is much easier on the slower moving neaps. Happily, neaps here tend to be in the early morning or evening. Happily, because I find night-fishing or crepuscular-fishing far more effective than fishing in the middle of the day. So if fishing an early morning tide (high water at, say, 6am) I start when it is still dark (3am) and fish through to about 9am. If fishing an evening tide (8.07pm yesterday) I start about half an hour after high water and fish through dusk and on in to the dark.

If you are fishing somewhere where neaps occur around mid day and mid night, fish the night in preference to day. If you are fishing somewhere where tidal ranges are relatively small compared to mine, then fish any dawn, dusk or night tides. Buy a set of tide tables and study them thoroughly.

Flies: size 2-4 Peter Ross or Medicine or Rogan's Gadget; or tandem mount MG Grizzle Lure or HF Sunk Lure; or and sand-eel imitation (I use one made out of olive and white bucktail, Lureflash Crystal Hair and black-and-silver eyes, plus clear epoxy).