After the freezing cold of late November, December and January it was a change to enjoy a fairly mild, though sometimes too wet, February. I visited the Ribble twice and the Hodder once on warm, still days. This was in order to make samples of the trout foods living in the river bed and to see if there was a spring olive hatch, and also to find out whether the grayling would respond. In both upper-middle Ribble and Hodder a few kick-samples showed a healthy stock of upwinged flies, stoneflies and caddis. They don’t seem too affected by the prolonged icy conditions, and some of the nymphs of the large stoneflies (Perla and Dinocras) were ‘up to size’ and will be out as adults in April. I also noted lots of spring olive nymphs, so they will be hatching at the start of the trout season, here in Lancashire (March 15).

The olives began to hatch on all three visits at between 12.30 and 1pm. And on the Ribble it brought back to mind February 1987. I had packed up lecturing the previous summer (after my 40th birthday) and the regional BBC programme, Look North, came to chat and  film me catching a few grayling on the dry fly. Apparently, very few people change life styles so drastically upon reaching the age where life starts! And I caught them some very good grayling on a size 14 Kite’s Imperial. From the same pool I had four graying and two very small brownies, all save one on a size 14 CdC Olive, the one on a Kite’s Imperial, that worked so well all those years ago. On the second day on another beat of the Ribble I had only two grayling and no trout, but one of the grayling weighed 2lb 11oz. I visited three pools on the Hodder through the one afternoon, and had two grayling from the largest and a single fish from the others; one from the big pool weighed a magnificent 3lb 3oz. All the grayling I caught were in magnificent condition.

There were also lots of salmon kelts about in both rivers, and one dead cock I found floating in the Hodder shallows must have weighed over 30lb when it came in from the sea. The run was especially big after the fishing seson had ended which makes a mockery of the Environment Agency’s system of using salmon catches as indicators of salmon runs!), and there were lots and lots of redds. Conditions out in the Atlantic seem to have been pretty good, so expect a good run of salmon in 2011.

Stocks Reservoir opened at the end of the month and it fished well. My son Pete, who counts these things, had 17 rainbows in two hours. The good thing was that the fish all came to flies fished on a floating fly line. So the water must not be too cold and, if we get some nice midge hatches or falls of land-breds in March and April the fish ought to be looking up!

As I write (March 2), it is only 13 days to the real, wild trout season. Hurrah!