October is the last month of the year in which I fish ‘seriously’, though I do take the light fly rod out in mild weather in November and February to dry fly fish for grayling. I do like a ‘close season’ of several weeks in which I do no fishing. Then I look forward keenly to the start of the trout season in March.

This October was all about salmon. To catch salmon we need water to bring fresh runs of fish up from the sea, and through the first part of this October we had rain in abundance. The Cumbrian Derwent reached over 4ft on the gauge and very slowly fell to 1ft 10in by the month’s end. Such a great salmon water comes about by the lakes of Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite holding water back after heavy rain and releasing it relatively slowly. In contrast, the Ribble-Hodder system, which has no great lakes to hold back and release water, hopped up and down, and this made the fishing more difficult.

I saw fish on both Ribble and Hodder in three visits, and on one day on the latter fish were visible, head-and-tailing all over the place as they moved upstream. Similarly one wildlife watcher, who doesn’t fish, went to Stainforth Foss (a waterfall at the head of the Ribble between Settle and Horton-in-Ribblesdale) and counted 62 salmon leaping upstream in about an hour and a half one October afternoon. Lots of fish; fish that were difficult to catch.

In contrast, the Derwent yielded its salmon far more readily to those who know how to present a fly properly. I fished there five days in October and had five salmon (I had one blank and one day with two fish), with estimated weights of 12, 12, 15, 20 and 20lb. One of the 12-pounders was very red, but the others were ‘freshish’ and 20 years ago they would have accompanied me home. Today, like the vast majority of the salmon anglers I know, we kill very few salmon and I already had a grilse to eat poached, and a 14-pounder smoked, all in the freezer. So I didn’t need to tap one of those on the head. Eating salmon, sea trout and wild brown trout is, in my humble opinion, a great privilege, and that sense is completely shattered if one eats them too often. But we enjoy a sea trout on Christmas Eve, and I have one in the deep freeze; and we enjoy smoked salmon occasionally, and we have that in. Being a privilege, when we eat such wonderful food we have to drink excellent white wine with it (bring on the Grand Cru Chablis, or top Alsace Reisling), so I cannot afford to eat them too often!

All my salmon this year have been caught on one of two flies, the Orange Mallard Shrimp and the Orange Hackle Shrimp. The latter is brighter orange than the former and I use it when the water is not clear. If my arm is twisted, I will describe the tying of these in my November blog and this will give the salmon anglers amongst you something to do in the boring Christmas break. But it was the Orange Mallard Shrimp that gave me most pleasure this year.

One of our Derwent regulars had booked a week on the Border Esk and because that river was too high he popped down to the Derwent. At lunchtime he looked a bit jaded (I had had a fish) so I gave him one of my flies. That afternoon he phoned Derek (who runs the fishing) to say that he had caught a salmon on it. Less than half an hour later he phoned to say that he had caught a second. And the next day he had a third on the same fly on the Border Esk. Brilliant!

Most of the fish we have caught from the Derwent this year have been two sea-winter salmon, weighing from around the 10lb mark to 25lb, with reports of salmon in and above 30lb. Grilse seem to have been much scarcer. This has been put down to large numbers of parr destroyed by the massive flood of 2009; dead and dying parr were found in puddles far from the river when the water fell. If that is the case, we should see fewer two-winter salmon in 2012. We shall see ....