After a bleak start, last week in Cornwall was ridiculously balmy, muggy, humid for early winter. I was sweating under my fleece. But a bank of cloud on the horizon still made me shiver. A front with a light southerly only means one thing here, and that’s more rain and it’s going to get very cold! Something to look forward to in the early afternoon.

As I headed towards Bodmin Moor with Catherine, she looked a little bemused, almost concerned, at my edgy nervousness. No, I assured her, it wasn’t her 1981 Land Rover Defender hurtling along the A30 at breakneck speed, it was breaking the drought after four weeks of no flyfishing!

Normally when I do this trip, I’m heading for Colliford Lake, hidden away behind Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn and King Arthur’s Dozmary Pool, but all public waters are closed for the winter so I was off to meet Julian Jones at Temple Trout Fishery, a long since retired, and very deep, china clay pit. There are two lakes here, in total about five acres, and I was going to fish Mallard Lake.

Julian met me at the gate. We discussed the fishery, and the nearby firing range, with our conversation accompanied by the intermittent staccato of machinegun fire. “Squaddies on the land the army rents from the Hanbury Tennisons,” Julian explained. “I saw lights by the lake one night and found a platoon who’d lost their way setting up in my carpark!”  

The lakes have a mix of rainbow and brown trout, and the website shows they can grow to a decent size. They are regularly stocked, and there is a small amount of natural recruitment from the creek that feeds Mallard Lake. On the day I fished, Julian warned me the lake had risen during the recent rain. The tide was a good half a metre up the bank and the water wasn’t clear. Undeterred, I rigged up with a sink tip and fished a series of Woolly Buggers for my first lap of the lake. I saw one fish leap clear of the water for no apparent reason. (There certainly weren’t any dragons or damsels around.) As I hoped though, there were disturbances from fish mooching around the feeder creek, with healthy-looking lake gravel right at the mouth, and more in the creek.

In all, I did three laps of the lake, over a bit more than 4 hours – the first with Buggers, the second with nymphs, the third with a dry dropper rig, or deep indicator. The wind blew, the sky occasionally brightened to the point I could imagine the sun before settling into a steady cold drizzle. The bankside vegetation is very dense, so the only fishable places are several cleared areas, all with reasonable back-cast clearance. I’m not complaining – on a busy day this would be great. 

On this day, I had the lake all to myself. Buggers fished along the bank under the trees attracted the most interest, followed by the deep nymphs under an indicator. I would definitely come back here for an evening session – the weed-beds would undoubtedly support good chironomid and damsels during the warmer months.

All up, a good day to sustain me until I’m back in the Snowy Mountains next week!