A day on the Test

Who hasn't heard of the river Test, in Hampshire UK? After having read so much about it over the years I always hoped to get the chance to fish it. So when I got to the UK while on holiday I got in touch with my good friend Mat McHugh of Flyodyssey who managed to get us on to a beat at Kimbridge. Ed from the Stockbridge Orvis shop accompanied us for the day as it was one of the Orvis beats that we fished.

The river was as I expected, lovely weed beds, manicured banks with short grass and a 1-2m thick river edge left as cover. The river was packed full of fish, too many in my opinion, but given the cost of fishing these beats people expect to catch fish. The majority of fish were rainbows, all good sized and fully finned, with some browns as well, along with a good head of local grayling and some pike as well.




There was the occasional swirl so I rigged up my Scott 2 weight and fished dry flies. Mat and Ed followed suit and soon fish started coming to the bank, taken on daddy long legs and small tan CDCs. I had lots of refusals but insisted and managed to land some good fish which were fun on the light rod:



Fish of the day for me though was a beautiful 3lb grayling that slurped down the #16 hare's ear CDC that i floated over it. Great fight and great fish.


So all up I landed 4 rainbows, 2 browns and a the grayling as well as lots more little grayling. The fishing was by no means difficult, mainly due to the large number of fish. Not much surface activity, we didn't stay till the evening, but it must be awesome during the mayfly hatch aka Duffer's Fortnight.

Thanks to Mat for letting me finally tick the box.