Fly fishermen, help me please.

Several days ago we moved from our temporary location in North Wales to a new location in Shropshire. We set up our motor home on a working farm in the heart of this rural county and it was a complete but pleasant surprise to find a small stream ran through the bottom of the field. At the first opportunity I had to take a closer look at this hidden little gem and see if it had anything to offer a novice fly fisherman. I could see that when in spate, this was a very dangerous stretch of water, the banks and water way were strewn with mature fallen trees and limbs. In places the bank was scoured by the flow of water into 8ft sheer walls and there was evidence of much flooding in adjacent fields, but the water was crystal clear with a clean gravel bottom and the depth was anything from a few inches to dark black holes of uncertain depth. In the mid afternoon I spoke with the farmer and quizzed him about the possibility of fishing the stream, to my delight he said it would be fine but the fish were only small, around 6 or 7 inches. "I don't mind that" I told him and he continued to point out the extent of his land in order that I did not trespass.

Several hours later I walked the stretch of water, looking for any "good" spots. I saw no fish and I found nothing that stood out from the rest, but the entire length was full of potential lies. Waist coat on and armed with my 7ft rod and net I climbed over the railings of the eight foot wide road bridge and down onto the bank. I crept no more than ten paces to the first old tree, tucked myself in close to the 3ft trunk and flicked the leader, with a self tied pheasant tail nymph into the water in front of the root. Before I had time to think, my rod was bent around the tree trunk in a tight curve, I had to stand on the wet, mossy roots and push the rod away from me because I was frightened that the rod would get broken on the tree. With my heart thumping, for several minutes I teased and cajoled this fish away from the roots, upstream a little into a small pool of shallow water to the right of the tree and drew it over my net. What a lovely fish, the richest golden brown with red spots that seemed to glow like LED's. As I released it into the upstream flow, I realised that I was trembling with excitement. Fantastic.

Staying in this location for several days, you can imagine that I just had to "fill my boots" and the next day I made my way down stream a little to the first likely looking spot. This time, a fallen bow with much debris dammed upstream against it. I flicked a couple of rod lengths of line down stream with a dry large dark olive fly attached and just as I stopped it, inches short of the debris there was a silvery flash followed by a deep splosh. I cast a second time and in exactly the same spot a repeat performance, but this time my rod bent over as the fish went deep. I knew immediately that this fish was considerably bigger than the last and I began to think that my light tippet was going to fail. For about 30 seconds I tried to persuade this beauty out into slower water then as quickly as it took the fly, it was gone. For the next fifteen minutes I tried to tempt this fish, but of course it was not having any. I really wanted this heavyweight so I changed the fly for a gold ribbed hairs ear, I let it go under the dam of debris and slowly stripped some line, WHACK it hit me again, I could not believe this and once more the battle was on. Again I failed to land the fish, expecting to find the fly missing, but no, it had shed the hook once more. Wounded, I left the river desperate to return. During the course of the next two days I hooked two more good sized fish and failed to land either, on one occasion when the fish shed the hook the fly and line was catapulted up into some low branches for me to untangle.

The reason I ask for help is of course, why did I loose these three fish, after many seconds of tussling and setting the hook quite hard on the third occasion? My flies were on barbed hooks of about size 16. Clearly my technique is not right, should I be using larger hooks for these sizeable fish? Or should I be giving some line and letting the fish run? I didn't give line because of the roots and debris in the water which I am sure would have broken the leader. Please can anyone help, I couldn't cope with such trauma again. Sadly, we have had to leave this site for the time being and at the farmers request I am not at liberty to give the location, he was as surprised as I at the size of the fish in this water that was barely no more than a brook.