How I Caught a Giant Grayling ‘PB'!

Traditional coarse angler John Bailey takes on a weekly challenge. Will he succeed or fail? Either way, you'll learn loads!

FOR 20 years all I did was travel for my fishing but now it takes a fair amount to get me out of East Anglia.

For years best mates like Simon Cooper, Keith Elliott, Neill Stephen, Martin Salter and Mark Everard had all been extolling the virtues of the River Frome to me and its wonderful stock of Ladies of the Stream, the amazing grayling. At last, under the pressure of all five, I relented. I’m so glad I did.

I’d like to tell you exactly where I fished for four and a half wondrous days, but I truly don’t know. I was sworn to secrecy and only saw signposts saying Puddle that, Tinkle that, and other quaint place names.

The gang wouldn’t even tell me if the Frome is pronounced to rhyme with Chrome or Broom. I might have been in the dark but as far as grayling fishing went, I was very much in the light.

Packing the car

Of course, I’m not new to grayling and until I kept myself to myself here in the east, I’d fished for them pretty much everywhere in the UK and abroad.

The Tweed, the Tummel, the Tay, the Welsh Dee, the Wye and its tributaries, the upper Severn, the Dove, the Derbyshire Wye, the Test, the Nadder, the Itchen, the Swale, the Nidd... I’d fished them all, never mind rivers in France, Germany, Austria, Slovenia and even Mongolia.

The net result of all this long ago experience is that I packed the car with pretty much everything. That’s the beauty of grayling, you can trot for them, quivertip for them and even fly fish for them.

I put in float rods from 11 to 14 ft, a couple of bomb rods and two 10 ft, three-weight fly rods with all the accompanying reels, and selections of floats, feeders and flies.