July was a busy month, with two RHS flower shows (I go mainly for the fruit and veg) and the CLA Game Fair. But I did manage to wet the occasional line, with two sessions standing out. The first was on the first of the month ... how apt! Geoff and I nipped up to the Aire for the evening rise on an ideal day, with a light breeze, mostly overcast and a touch of humidity in the air. We arrived at five o'clock and walked slowly downstream looking for flies and feeding trout. It was six o'clock before we saw any action, and from then until 9.15 we had some quite hectic fishing. The trout were feeding on sedges, of which there were three abundant species hatching and flying in swarms over the water wherever trees overhang. Altogether I had one wild brownie that was 18in in length, three stockies, and eight smaller wild ones, together with a grayling 17in long. The fly, my hackleless Elk Hair Caddis, size 14. At 9.15 the fly disappeared, save for the very occasional blue-winged olive and pale watery, and in the next half hour I had only two diminutive wild trout in fast riffles.

But it was not the fishing that made the evening. As we walked downstream I could hear some juvenile falcons calling from (presumably) a nest in a copse a hundred yards away on the other side of the river. I assumed that they were young kestrels, for they are a common sight here. As we walked back upstream in the gloaming a falcon with longer wings than a kestrel and shorter tail shot past. It was a hobby, and minutes later we watched it hunting swallows and sand martins over and around the water. Suddenly a swallow flew past chased by the male hobby, and, with a kink of its wings, the hobby swung around and seized it. There is more to fishing than catching fish!

Incidentlly, the scientific name of the hobby is Falco subuteo, and the latter was given to a table football played by people who ought to get out more!

On the 16th my two pals Chris Hosker and Alan Roe invited me to join them on our stretch of the Cumbrian Derwent. We knew that the river was at summer height, so the chance of catching salmon was remote (but Alan persevered with his brand new 15ft rod). Chris decided to Czech-nymph and I plumped for sea trout. We called at Tebay service station on the M6 for our usual bag of delicious pies, cheese and bread to prevent us passing away from malnutrition before we got back home. If you ever go up or down the M6, never pass by Tebay services for they are unique, providing excellent food (it is run by a gang of local farmers). Forty minutes later, as we arrived at the river, the heavens opened. So for almost two hours we sat in our big fishing hut, nattering to our esteemed river keeper, Derek, drinking coffee and chewing some of our purchases (the plum and duck pie and lamb and asparagus pie, in my case). Then when it stopped raining and the sun came out, so did we.

I decided to walk up to Eel Settings, my favourite pool on this beat. But when I reached the pool below that one, Muriel's, I stopped. Muriel's is a small pool, with a narrow band of flow beneath overhanging trees. It looked very promising. So I tackled up with a size 10 heavily-hackled Red (Brown) Sedge on a 12ft tapered Rio leader. I kept well back and fished as delicately as I could. But for nothing; I didn't even sniff a fish of any sort rising. So I sat on the waterside bench and thought. Nothing rising ... go down a bit. I tied a dropper on the leader 3ft from the point. On the point I knotted on a size 12 Mallard & Claret. Now for the dropper. I looked through my two boxes of sea trout/loch wet flies. One fly stood out from all others, a size 14 Black Pennell. Why? I don't know why. I was telling this tale to Ken Maylor who, alas, is out of action with a broken tibia, got by slipping on a cow pat when fishing the Aire. Said he, I have caught many salmon by using the fly that falls from the fly box when I open it. He's correct. It's a funny feeling when a fly chooses itself and works. It's rather like the feeling lots of salmon anglers have had when they know that a salmon is there in a particular lie and will take their fly.

So on went the size 14 Black Pennell. I made the first cast into the top of the streamy pool neck. The second cast was about two feet further downstream and, as it came round to the crease between fastish water and the slacker, I figure-of-eighted the line back. And bingo! A sea trout took. I then caught two more in very few casts, lost one (it threw the hook), and had another just above the pool tail. Four bright silver sea trout, all of around the 2lb mark, and all on that Black Pennell!

I strode up to Eel Settings and, just as I started to fish, Derek and David Calvert arrived, so I reeled in and joined them on the bench that overlooks the pool. "I think that is fishing over," David said, and pointed to the river. One of the feeder streams, a short distance upstream, had come into flood following the earlier rain, and had coloured the river. And that, was that.

Besides those two interesting sessions, a couple of evenings on a lovely beat of the headwaters of the Aire, that is never stocked, produced catches of 14 and 19 wild brown trout, mostly in the 6-9in length range, but one of 11in and one of 13in. Because of the widespread heavy stocking of rivers in recent years with 10-14in (or larger) farmed brown trout, we have come to look down our noses at small, wild trout. We shouldn't. In days gone by, before the days of the fish farm, people like Edmonds and Lee, TE Pritt, Francis Walbran and GEM Skues fished our Aire and that is the quality of trout that they caught. The trout farm has much to answer for when it comes to rivers that ought to be full of wild, brown trout!

We have also had an excellent run of sea trout in the Hodder. I had three fish in two short late afternoon sessions, in the 1-2lb range, and four herling. Here I now rarely fish beyond dusk, and an article in the October FF&FT will explain why. Early in the month we had some water and a good run of salmon into the Ribble. One pal and ace-salmon-catcher, Clifford Smith, had three cracking fish in one day, but alas suffered a stroke later that evening. We are all wishing him well, and hoping that he makes a rapid and good recovery.