Brownlining for Ide

News arrived back last night with Lena that she was sure she had seen carp swimming up a ditch towards the stream close by our place so off course curiosity got the better of me and I shot off down the road to inspect. On arrival I was very surprised to actually find a dozen or so Ide working there way up this ditch towards a stream close buy.

I’ve been following the antics of Jean-Paul from the "Roughfisher blog" closely over the last 6 months with regards to catching what others class as the undesirable fish on the fly (Carp, Catfish, White suckers, Shorthead redhorse) to name but a few and wished that we had Carp in the region for me to try target alternative species. Now I’ve never fished for Ide before, but knew they take Gurglers and white foam presentation flies of the surface through my friends in Norway, and the only fly I had was this one which came with a set of shitty flies in a fishing box set……”well it will have to do” I thought.

As you can see the ditch …..is a ditch, and after several snag ups either in the bushes or in the ditch itself I managed to set the fly in just the right spot. To be truthful I held absolutely no hope of catching one of these fish but I nearly shit myself when one popped its mouth out the water and sucked the tiny foam head fly down. I can only tell you the next minute was just total adrenalin coursing through my veins. Unfortunately once it realized it was hooked the Ide then proceeded to dive under ever snag & submerged branch it could find trying to eradicate the fly out of its gob, which left my leader and line in a right bloody mess.

If you’ve seen “CAST AWAY” with Tom Hanks you’ll remember his reaction when he eventually made a fire for the 1st time…………that’s what I looked & felt like.
It will be a long time before I can class myself as a “Brownliner”, but what I can tell you is how much this fish means to me…….Its just one of those moments in fishing that will stay with me forever……….STOKED!