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Gnats
and snails
Let me tell you of the best day since I last posted this web
page. It was last Thursday. Unlike the rest of the past fortnight
(see below) the weather was warm with plenty of sun and the
breeze light.
Yvonne and I nipped up to our reservoir on the Pennines above
the milltown of Blackburn. The boulders of the reservoir bed
were, as far as I could see, covered with small (up to 1cm
diameter) black snails, and some of the snails had left the
bottom and were floating at the surface. It is commonly thought
that they do this in hot weather when the water is lacking
in oxygen. That is balderdash. If that were the case we would
have trout dying in the reservoir! In fact, the water was
saturated with oxygen according to my oxygen-probe. What the
snails were doing was to graze diatoms from the underside
of the surface film.
Anyway, the trout were pigging on them. Because we stock the
reservoir and the brown trout we put in cannot breed there,
I occasionally tap a brace on the head. Yvonne and I enjoy
these for dinner with a good bottle of Chablis. I tapped two
and returned seven more before I got bored. The two I tapped
had about 400 snails, one corixid, five land-bred beetles,
one buzzer pupa and two landbred flies in their stomachs.
The successful fly: a black CDC dry 'sedge type' size 12.
'Let's go to the river!' said I. So we zoomed off to the Ribble
via the ace-cafe in Gisburn (coffee and cakes). As Y. settled
back in her deckchair and I tackled up we noticed trout (plus
a few grayling) feeding keenly. But there were very few real
flies visible: olive uprights, medium olives, a brook dun
or two. So I tied a black CDC dry 'sedge type' in size 18.
I had five fish from the body of the pool and two more in
the neck. They had been taking black gnats: one had c70 size
18-equivalent black gnats, two landbred beetles, a blue bottle,
a Baetis nymph, a Hydropsyche larvae and two Ryacophila larvae
in its stomach.
In both cases, what I found interesting was that, although
the fish were concentrating on the one dominant food, they
were prepared to take other food items as well.
I told the tale to Oliver Edwards at Chatsworth. The recent
bad weather had reduced his fishing, but on one visit to the
Ure at Masham the river had 'shimmered' with fish rising to
take fallen gnats. Charlie Davison recounted the same from
the upper Clyde. So 2003, the Year of the Black Gnat, goes
on.
Of course Chatsworth Angling Fair last weekend was a rainy
and muddy event. The River Derwent flows through the estate
and Oliver and I found our usual large array of trout foods
in the river. But my dry fly sessions with Howard Croston
and Paul Proctor were spoilt by the torrential rain showers.
I must ask Oliver to devise a way of tying an umbrella over
a dry fly for fishing in the rain!
Must go now. The rivers are up and the sea trout are in!
Malcolm Greenhalgh |
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