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I
don't think I have experienced such a contrast in weather
and river conditions in April-May as in this year. A week
last Tuesday we all gathered for the six-day long John Norris
show at Penrith, moaning like hell about the weather: hot,
bright, with not a drop of rain for the best part of a month.
The rivers were dead low. We worried for the rest of the spring
and summer. Even those who had perhaps planned to go to Scotland
to fish for salmon had been effected by pessimism, for we
met few on their way north. And then the weather broke on
the 26th/27th of April; cooler weather has given us lots of
rain and the rivers I fish at home have been as high as six-feet
above summer level! In one falling spate I even tried for
an early sea trout, with no success.
PLEASE LOOK OUT FOR.... Over the past two years Oliver Edwards
and I have been noticing the spread of a lovely little upwinged
fly called the turkey dun. It is a river fly, a typical mayfly
type with upright wings; it is medium-large in size (close
to the large dark olive) but has three tails and a very dark
brown body and wings (the wings look as though made from bronze
mallard). Yesterday I found it for the first time on the Hodder
(Ribble tributary in Lancashire); in 2002 I found it on the
Ribble at Long Preston and Paythorne. Both sites I have sampled
for many years. In 2002 OE and I found it on the Derwent at
Chatsworth; the first time in about ten years of sampling
there.
Please look out for this if you fish the British Isles or
northern Europe : rivers, 3 tails, very dark brown coloration.
It hatches through May. If you see one or more, let me know
through the magazine.
But the fishing the last few days (despite the last large
dark olives and some olive uprights hatching) has been a tremendous
fall of black gnats, body-length equivalent to a size 18 dry
fly hook. Peter and I called at our reservoir and had five
brown trout between us on about an hour; we then went to the
Hodder: all fish were taking the gnat and a size 18 Black
F-Fly worked well. Next day the same on the Ribble. The gnats
were still falling today and I suspect may be around for a
bit:
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Hook:
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Dry
fly 18. |
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Thread:
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Black |
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Body:
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Black
tying thread. |
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Wing:
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Bunch
small CDC feathers from a wild duck but to length |
Dead easy. Dead efficient. Don't
oil the thing.
Going back to the John Norris show, OE and I had a visitor:
Visitor: Can you show me how to tie a big black sedge?
OE: Big? How big?
Visitor: So big. (he held finger and thumb to show a gap of
three inches).
OE: There's no black sedge in Britain that size. They nobbut
grow bigger than half an inch.
Visitor: But they do. I caught one on the river.
MG: Tell me....did its wings lie flat over the body? ...and
when it flew, did its wing beats appear uncoordinated so it
didn't fly strongly?
Visitor, smiling: That's right.
OE and MG: That wasn't a sedge. It was a big stonefly!
There are some trout and grayling fly-fishers who think that
OE and I go on too much about real insects!
Tight lines,
Malcolm Greenhalgh
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