Salmon on a Dry Fly.

           
Having fished down the pool with my switch fly rod I decided to give the salmon fishing a rest and change over to dry fly fishing for trout with my new 5 wt fly rod that I made myself. Really the rocks at Beat 1 have ruined the pool and trying to fish it with a salmon fly is near impossible due to the amount of big rocks that have been put in there. They have changed the hydrodynamics completely causing lots of back eddies and upsurges which are useless when trying to fish a salmon fly down because the line is being dragged backwards and the fly is sideways being held up by the numerous eddies. There was no need to put these rocks in and destroy a perfectly good fishery and it is the same for all the beats since the introduction of these boulders.
I put up a size 18 emerger and started fishing covering a few rising trout when a nice rise caught my eye, watching that area I noticed another rise and then I covered it with my fly.There was a lovely head and tail over the dry fly and lifting into the fish it immediately became airborne and straight away with the flash of silver I knew it was a nice salmon. I had to be very careful as I was using a 6x tippet but the rod really cushioned the fight and allowed me to net the grilse safely. I normally tail or beach all my salmon but fearing that it would break the line and take my fly with it I decided it was better in the net. It was a lovely sealiced grilse of about 4 lbs which I quickly released back into the river. Later that evening just as it was getting dark I hooked another grilse of about 5 lbs in the same area with that same size 18 emerger and after a great fight it was again released to fight another day. It's rare enough catching a salmon on a dry fly but catching two in the same day maybe I should switch over to dry fly fishing for salmon in the future... maybe not as I reckon I would be waiting a long time to repeat that session again.