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I have always wanted to fish with a split cane rod, ever since I was lent one a few years ago. I normally fish with a Winston rod (I know - I spoiled myself may years ago when living in the US and treated myself to one) which is quite "fast" and sometimes is a bit tricky to cast on some of the more difficult stretches, (at least thats my excuse) and I must be one of the best trout spookers in the Club, so I wanted to try a split cane slower rod. The trouble is though that most split cane rods are very expensive. After a bit of research I found a Chinese website for a company who sell Chinese made bamboo (Tonkin) rods - https://www.cnflyfishing.com/. The rods are made by a company "Rodcore" who also sell reels, lines and so on. I ordered a 7ft 6in #4 rod last week and it arrived in five days (Fedex). I couldn't find any reviews of these Chinese rods online so didn't know what to expect as regards quality but am pleasantly surprised. The quality and finish are very good. They are very reasonably priced - not the £two or three thousand demanded by custom builders. If anyone would like details please get in touch. I've had a few dry casts on the lawn and it feels really nice, quite soft, much slower than my Winston and it is possible to drop a fly quite accurately provided you go for accuracy as opposed to distance. I will try it for real this evening.

With the incredibly hot weather yesterday there wasn’t really much opportunity to get out on the river. The high temperatures starve the water of its oxygen content and puts massive pressure on the fish. However, around 5pm I noticed that the temperatures were starting to fall enough and the cloudless skies meant I might be able to get a couple of hours out on the club waters before the daylight gave way to night. As I reached the shaded, woody shelters of beat C, the river suddenly came to life. I guess with it being so hot through the day, the fish hadn’t been feeding until the day started to draw in and cool. It took the whole evening to find something they wanted to feed on and subsequently this was my only fish, but what a fish!!! A beautiful 18” Brown Trout that rose to a Tan Elkwing Caddis and didn’t want to give it up, one of the best Chalk Stream Tigers I’ve ever had. Obviously being all the way down near the very limits of our beat on C I assumed it to be a true wildie, so I was very suprised to find a little red tag just behind the dorsal fin?!?! Unless ive missed something somewhere, I am pretty sure that beats A,B & C are still maintained as wild and unstocked?! So this means that either this fish has come all the way down from L&K, or has navigated its way all the way through from the other river system - which seems massively unlikely. I like the concept that this fish has come down from K, especially when you consider some of the obsticals & non club affiliated waters it will have come through to get there! Hopefully the neighbouring club isnt using the same tags as us for stocking! Makes you think about how much these fish navigate/migrate(?!?!) along the course of the river, could there be any scope for putting trakers into some of the stocked fish in the future? I would be fascinating to see their movements.

I managed to navigate the traffic on the A303 on my way from Devon to farther up country and made a quick stop to have a couple of hours on the club water. The water was lower than my first visit and I got the chance to spot fish and as much as I wanted to cast a dry I didn't see any rises and so nymphs were the order of the day. As I left there was the start of a nice caddis hatch that I hope I'll get a look at next time!