Dilemma

I tied a few flies this week for the first time since the laboriously assembled clinger nymph I did a sequence for back in October. And they're not for me either! It seems that over the last few years I have become less and less inclined to engage with fly fishing over the winter months, possessing neither the time nor inclination to shuffle about in freezing cold water searching for bottom hugging grayling.....and a visit to a stocked small stillwater over Christmas reminded me why I left that particular scene behind many years ago. Even fly tying fails to inspire me much when the days are short - I'm so out of practice that the prospect of starting up again seems a bit daunting.

I did catch a few hours along the Ribble last week, in glorious, crisp winter conditions. It was a pleasure to be out in the fresh air, and a pleasure to witness one or two signs that winter, if not exactly on it's last legs, has certainly entered it's final act. Despite the chill, there was a certain thin warmth in the sun's direct gaze that just isn't present before the solstice. I felt it most after midday when seemingly in response to the melting hoar frost, a few large dark olives began to emerge; and underneath the far bank of a long slow glide, a couple of grayling rose sporadically to intercept them. Unfortunately the mere act of slowly edging across the belly deep water to reach a casting position was enough to send them packing. No matter, it was an encouraging sign - a precursor of spring. Later in the woods, I saw that the shoots of wild garlic were breaking through the wet ground, already a full inch high. What will the coming season bring I wonder?

The brief grayling session got me thinking: the unexpected opportunity to attach a tapered leader to my line reminded me how little I enjoy tossing heavy bugs around for longer than a few minutes, and how for me these days, a whole third of the year can pass without my extending a proper fly line. I realised that one of the aspects that I enjoy most about fly fishing is the actually deployment of the fly line, the act of casting itself. Not that I am particularly gifted in this department (in fact I would go so far as to say my casting is decidedly agricultural), but that's not to say I don't enjoy the quiet whisper of the line through the air and the rare satisfaction which comes with getting things right occasionally. I've come to the conclusion the primary reason I can't fall in love with Czech style nymphing techniques, is that it just doesn't involve fly fishing - casting - in the conventional sense; a theory backed up by the fact that when I went through a spell of experimenting with braid nymphing techniques, I may have had tremendous success in a fish-catching sense, but I hated it all the more for the fact that the tip of my fly line was further than ever from seeing the light of day.

Which leaves me a problem. Being an angler who likes to keep abreast of contemporary developments in the fly fishing world, I realise it's high time I 'got with the programme' and embraced the current trend for ultra long leader (leader to hand) techniques. A development I have resisted stubbornly for the last couple of seasons. Slowly but surely the compelling arguments offered by the likes of Jeremy Lucas have got under my skin to the point where I have started scanning the catalogues for a rod in the 10-11' #3 class. Indeed Jeremy has been very helpful in assisting my induction into this refinement of our beautiful sport and I fully expect to be out there this spring, long rod in hand, delivering a dry fly attached to nothing but 14m of tapered braid and copolymer.
I can see that the presentational possibilities are exciting, but a part of me worries that I will find jettisoning the fly line too painful and yearn to revert back to more traditional techniques. And what of an 11' rod in a pokey corner beneath a bush - will I need to start taking two rods to the river with me? Will the benefit of vastly reduced drag with the leader to hand method mean that I become hugely out of practice with the slack line techniques needed with conventional fly line, leaving me the poorer for it? I have a host of unanswered questions which I intend to address over the coming months. I will keep you posted here. First I need to save up for a rod of length and line rating which together just didn't exist a few years ago. That in itself will be interesting - just what does an 11' #3 handle like I wonder?


For those of you whose interest in leader to hand techniques has been piqued by recent magazine articles and developments on the international scene, then the website below will be of interest. I can recommend a visit.

Presentation Flyfishing

Snapshots from an Angling life #2

The morning had gone well.  It was one of those late summer days of mild air and thick cloud and the wind was forecast to veer during the day from south easterly to south westerly on the back of an incoming high pressure system. It was a day breezy enough to keep the boat moving at a decent clip; not to the degree where the drogue was necessary, but sufficiently so that one could  justifiably be deployed if tactics required a slower drift. And the white overcast softened the light beautifully, creating a damp, cotton-wool fuzziness to the atmosphere that made it feel as though the air and water were one, their limits all but indistinguishable.  I could sense the vigour of the place as the breeze infused the water's surface with oxygen and fine spray whipped off the wave crests absorbed into the humid air around. It was one of those days the stillwater trout fisher dreams about and I felt with every bone in my body that the native brownies would be, as a friend of mine puts it, "up and looking for trouble".

As I motored upwind to start my first drift of the day, I remember feeling a peculiar combination of emotions: there was pure, nerve-jangling excitement at what the day might hold. There was also a strange sense of loneliness at the prospect of spending perhaps 12 hours afloat, alone, on a wild, untamed northern stillwater. And counteracting this was the feeling of comfortable familiarity which derives from having spent many hours getting to know a water intimately. It is difficult to explain, but I  felt slightly ill at ease, yet at the same time totally at ease as I turned the boat beam-on and rolled my team of wet flies out into the wave.
The next few hours followed a mesmerising pattern as I sank into the rhythm of deep concentration that loch style fly fishing demands. I changed line a few times, tweaked my choice of fly patterns, drifted both unfettered and be-drogued. I pulled the flies slowly, pulled them fast, stripped, twiddled and hung them. I drifted contours and open water, weedbeds and rocks. The melody may have occasionally altered but the theme remained the same: constant working of my team as the little boat rocked and nudged in the wave.

By mid afternoon, my fugue had been interrupted seven times by magnificent trout which ambushed my flies from seemingly out of nowhere. In each case I had developed an eerie feeling beforehand that they were coming -  a feeling I cannot begin to articulate but which I could best liken to the nymph fisherman's 'sixth sense' which compels him to lift into a fish which ostensibly gave no clear indication as to its presence. I would be drifting along, thinking nothing in particular, when a sudden certainty would take hold that something exciting was about to happen. No more was this evident than at the end of the last drift I made before breaking for lunch when, without any reason other than a gut feeling, I began the upward sweep of my flies a little earlier than I normally would, to be met by an almighty pull as a huge trout took hold of the middle dropper. The fish weighed just over six pounds; a broad shouldered, yellow-bellied beast of a hen fish which regurgitated a mess of part digested sticklebacks into my lap before scything off into the depths leaving my head and arms soaked through. That trout should have etched an indelible mark on my memory. But like an accidental tape recording of one song over another, the subsequent events of that day have unfairly diminished the magnificent creature's splendour in my mind.

I took lunch on the bank, basking in the afterglow of a good morning's work. I knew then that the bulk of the day's action was probably behind me. This water, like so many others, has a tendency to drop quiet in the afternoon before maybe picking up again late on. The evening sport might or might not materialise, based upon a number of variables which would be impossible to accurately predict; and in any case, I sometimes find it difficult to continue on into the 'simmer dim' when my whole body aches after a full day of repeated casting and retrieving. No, as I reclined amongst the grasses and wildflowers, I half conceded that the big trout I had just caught would quite possibly be my last of the day. I would venture out again for sure, but my expectations were not high.

Three hours later and my prediction was looking safe. The wind had veered square southerly and eased a touch, bringing the inexorable feeling that here was a water at rest, it's residents taking their mid afternoon siesta. I propped my feet against the bulwarks, leaned into the backrest of my seat, and maintained a casual working of the flies; an occasional break for a nip from the hip flask, and an awful lot of gawping at the bleak majesty of the surrounding scenery. At such times, the rhythmic nodding of the boat can induce an almost trance-like state in the angler, where despite nothing at all happening for long periods, time seems to just slip away such that an hour can feel like five minutes. So it was that afternoon: the hours eased by like the low clouds and I fished away, replaying the morning's events over and over in my mind.
Then, as the wind picked up again and began a subtle shift towards the south-west, everything changed once more. The sky darkened a touch, the atmosphere freshened, and I began to sense that another fish might be on the cards.

Brown trout are strange creatures. Seemingly the slightest thing can switch them on or off at the drop of a hat: a brief spell of invertebrate activity maybe, change in light levels or atmospheric pressure perhaps. The variables are many and only partially understood and I personally find the whole thing fascinating. Nearly every angler you speak to will have a few stories about days when the fish suddenly went off the boil for no apparent reason, or conversely, a long period of complete inactivity was followed by a short burst of hectic sport. Sure enough, location is often part of this equation as the territorial nature of brown trout means that the importance of fishing where the fish are (as opposed to where they are not), is paramount - obviously. But notwithstanding this, there are definitely occasions when brownies will lie completely doggo, unresponsive to any external stimuli.....and the change from this state to that of actively feeding, never fails to surprise me in it's suddenness or apparent unpredictability. Sometimes it just takes a change - any change - in the atmosphere. A slight increase in wind speed, a change in light intensity, or something less obvious and difficult to articulate, but nevertheless tangible. I needed a change that afternoon, and as I motored to the top the wind and felt renewed vigour in the air, I knew straight away that I had got what I wanted.

It was early September and a couple of the cock fish I had caught in the morning were heavily kyped and showing late season colour....and the quality of light seemed to suggest a pattern with claret in the dressing. I went with a gut feeling and tied on my 'Bloody Dabbler' in the point position, popped the drogue out and resolved to fish the flies deep and slow. Minutes later I tightened in response to a vicious yark early in the retrieve and brought fish number eight to the boat - a small but aggressive looking trout of round 1lb 8oz. Then, a few casts later, and with every nerve in my body quivering in anticipation, I felt a long slow draw countering the steady pull of my retrieve hand and as the stretch of the fly line bottomed out and the hook went home, I lifted the rod into the biggest trout of my life.

Not that this was apparent straight away. When you've returned a six pounder earlier on, it's difficult to see what more the day can hold. Sure this fish was a heavy one and it's initial fifteen yard run was ponderous, deliberate and entirely unstoppable; but after that the fish went deep and stayed there, striving  - as a wild brown trout will - to get behind the drifting boat and back to the place from whence it came. I knew I had hold of a good 'un, but I confess I didn't realise how big.

Fifteen minutes later, I was beginning to get some idea. This trout just wouldn't behave itself. My set up was geared to the size of fish I expected to catch and as such, was by no means subtle by loch styling standards. A ten foot rod rated for a seven weight was teamed with fluorocarbon of the same strength. And I'm a fairly hard player of fish compared to some. Make no mistake, this fish was receiving some pressure, but although it was showing signs of tiring, I had yet to get a proper look - brief flashes of gold-brown a couple of feet below the surface seemed to suggest an exceptionally deep, if not overly long trout. It was hooked on the point fly - the bloody dabbler - so I had the comfort of knowing that there were no trailing flies which could get caught up on the lake bed. I took my time, applied optimum pressure...and waited.
It would be nice to tell you that this fish made a number of searing runs, stripping my line to the backing and leaping clear, porpoise-like several times. The truth is that the fight, although protracted, held absolutely nothing remotely exciting to report. As time passed, my right arm began to tire and I became impatient to get the beast in the net. Every moment brought me closer to landing or losing the fish and I became strangely resigned to accepting either outcome. Eventually after some wallowing around and final half-hearted lunges, I got the trout's head up - this huge, kyped jaw -  and turned it into the waiting net. I left the net in the water allowing the fish to rest for a minute, stretched my aching limbs, collected myself, and then peered over the bulwark to behold a wild brown trout of simply stunning proportions.

It was a cock fish. A big ugly cock fish. Relatively short in the body, but impressive in girth. His adipose fin was bigger than my thumb and his teeth shredded the skin on my fingers when I went to unhook him. If I fish until the day I die, I will probably never see anything of his like again, but the memory of lifting that great trout from my net will always stay with me. I didn't weigh him - an attempt would have proved futile in any case as my scales only went to seven pounds. He measured just under 28 inches long.

And so ended the first day afloat of a September which would continue to yield sport beyond my wildest dreams. The memories of that month are tattooed on my mind, but none more so than when I watched that huge brown trout sidle off into the depths and sat back in the knowledge that one of the defining moments of my angling life had just occurred. Even a blind squirrel finds its nuts, and we anglers are all entitled to our red letter day. That - at least in the context of wild stillwater fishing - was mine: a happy convergence of circumstances which placed me in the right place at the right time. Sheer fortune? Probably......but such moments provide the driving force which press us to the water's edge time and again. I hope that it always remains so.




A happy new year to you all!
Matt

Snapshots from an Angling Life #1:

The gear is stowed and I'm ready to go. The little two piece rod is lashed to the frame of my 5-speed racer and my backpack contains my reel, hooks (big ones, size 6), a couple of ounces of Morrisons cheddar and little else. The homework will wait; a long summer's evening fishing awaits at the end of a 4 mile bike ride which will be spent almost entirely thinking about Carole Earp and how, in another life, I might pluck up the courage to ask her out.

My destination is the lower River Brock - an uninspiring, artificially leveed, silty bottomed ditch of a river. But it is my bit of river, almost never fished by another angler, and I value that sense of ownership and the intimate knowledge of the small things of the place - a trait which unknown to me at the time, will follow me staidly into later life. Here is a stream which doesn't even register on the radar of most anglers; a minor tributary of a minor river, whose flood-prone past has resulted in the construction of heavily reinforced banks, and whose shallow, sluggish flow over light-coloured sand betrays a complete dearth of fish of any kind, save an odd miniature flounder and a few eels. Except I, as a fluff lipped, awkward, but arrogant 15 year old, reckon to know better. With little more productive to do with my copious spare time than walk the banks of my local rivers, I have seen how in the days following a big flood in the main river, groups of chub come up into the tributary seeking comparative shelter whilst the waters recede......and can then be found in the sandy shallows, hugging tight in to the banks below the lank, overhanging bankside grasses.
To a more experienced angler, this probably reeks of 'Mickey Mouse' fishing -  a captive audience of schoolie chevin herded into an ugly channel barely five yards across. And fair enough - here is my quarry: conveniently visible and with no deep water in proximity to disappear into, thus sparing me the unfathomable puzzle of how to extract putative fish from black, bottomless depths. But these fish are far from easy and although I have no concept of it at the time, the lessons learned in effecting their capture will stay with me throughout my angling life.

Cycle dismounted and abandoned behind a hedge, I have crested the floodbank and descended into the balsam where, crouched amongst thistle and sheep turd, I watch. They are there sure enough, patrolling beneath the green canopy in an orderly line, melting periodically into the mess of overhanging willow branches upstream before reappearing like dark ghosts, nailed to the far bank in water which looks but inches deep. Their route is defined and repetitive, covering a distance of approximately five yards above and below my position. I could set my watch by them - the whole circuit takes just under two minutes, with a good quarter of that spent out of sight beneath the willow. Good fish - two pounders, maybe an odd one over three. I tiger-crawl up the bank and then, crouching, scuttle off downstream until sufficiently out of range, where I set up my rod and reel, thread the line through the rings, tie on a big hook.....and begin my search for slugs. OK, I've got my stinky cheese, but that's for emergencies. Slugs are what I need and luckily the damp conditions make it pretty easy to collar half a dozen big black ones within the space of a minute or two (the leg of my Wranglers is stiff with their slime, accumulated from wiped fingers on dozens of such occasions).


Back on station and with an impaled slug apparently trying to turn itself inside out upon the point of my Kamasan, I make a last mental run through my strategy, check my net is to hand and then lay my trap. The pod of fish has emerged from under the willow and is drifting in single file downstream, barely perceptible shadows amidst shadows, an occasional puff of silt or white of gulping mouth betraying their presence from time to time. With a flick of the rod tip, I lob the unfortunate gastropod into the shade of the willow branches, the spot just vacated, and rest the rod into the crook of a thick offshoot of cow parsley, tip protruding just far enough from the bank to keep the line from fouling amidst the vegetation. Then wait........the display on my casio telling me that 30 seconds has passed......one minute......a few more seconds.......here they come; the regiment returns, nosing into the darkness. My hand hovers over the rod butt, trembling; mouth dry; balsam pods exploding above my head..........

This moment of anticipation is what, more than 20 years later has made me return time and again to the waterside. Lily pond to windswept reservoir; mucky ditch to mighty salmon river; it's all the same to me. Stitched into the essence of my being is that desire to know the unknown, to experience the throb of life through the line and wonder every single time if the fish which has just taken hold, just might be the stuff of dreams; and at a more fundamental level, to experience the fleeting excitement of success followed by satisfied reflection upon a plan well executed . It didn't seem right to me at the time that once the bright orange tip of my little quiver rod had bucked round and I had snatched the rod from the ground to feel the weight of a stubborn chub ploughing a determined furrow for the submerged tree roots; it didn't seem right that the actual landing of the fish felt anti climactic. This magnificent lump of untamed bronze, with scales the size of my thumb nails, was treasure indeed; a nugget of precious metal from such a depressing little dyke. Yet it was the moment I craved, not so much the treasure. The electricity-charged moment of hope, expectation, anticipation.

I feel it still in the slow drift of the dry fly towards the steadily rising fish, in the wake of the bob fly on a wild upland stillwater, and in the travel of my sunken nymphs through the river's turbulent currents. In angling, anything is possible because so much is unknown. Maybe it's a sign that I'm no longer a young man, but where once I wanted to know all and everything, these days I'd rather remain at least partially ignorant.....as if in some subconscious fear that one day the sudden manifestation of life at the end of the line will finally cease to surprise, and its magic be lost as a result.

Step by step: Oliver Edwards heptagenid nymph variant - part 2 of 2

If you've followed this sequence through part one, you may well be forming the opinion that this pattern is a bit of a pain in the arse to tie. To be honest, it's not too bad when you've got used to the proportions and so on; but still, there's no denying it's a bit long-winded and I always curse when I lose one in a tree. So why bother?

Actually, that's a good question and I'll start at the beginning. Anyone who has ever lifted a stone from the bed of a trout stream and had a look at what's living underneath, will probably have encountered a heptagenid or stoneclinger nymph. They are widespread and common in our UK rivers and although they are said to be very intolerant of pollution, most of our streams contain decent populations. The heptageniidae account for several different species of upwing aquatic flies in this country, of the genera heptagenia, rithrogena and ecdyonurus. Species familiar to anglers include the March Brown, Yellow May Dun, Olive Upright and Large Brook Dun. Many of these hatch by crawling out of the river margins onto part submerged reeds or stones, but some do hatch in open water at the surface (the Yellow May is an oddball owing to, it would appear, more than one emergence pattern - see brief discussion here).
Whatever their mode of emergence, there is little doubt that these stoneclinger nymphs do form an important part of the trout and graylings' menu - something not lost on expert entomologist Edwards, who set about solving the problem of how to represent the unusual profile of these invertebrates. The resulting pattern has become famous and rightly so - it's profile is accurate and the general impression of realism which the use of accurate tail and leg configurations creates, makes it an attractive looking pattern to both anglers and fish. Oliver has utmost confidence in it and would have no hesitation in recommending it to any fisher of freestone trout rivers.

My experiences have proved equally convincing. Used singly, or as part of a two or three fly team, it is deadly when fished classic upstream nymph style into pocket water and riffles. I have even used it in slower water to fool sighted fish, apparently not actively feeding. Here, the realistic profile of the fly excels - few other patterns would work so well in similar situations.

But the big question is this: is it so effective that the time and effort taken in its tying is justified by its increased effectiveness over other, simpler patterns? Well I've given this a lot of consideration over the last 6 or 7 years, and I have to say that for me, the answer is no. Well not insofar as I would abandon my general purpose bead headed nymphs in favour solely of more realistic patterns. I went through a spell of only tying and using close copy imitative nymphs for a year or two. I caught and caught well as you might expect. However, as time at the vice became harder to come by and I became increasingly reliant on quick, easy patterns to get a few flies in the box before a session, I began to realise that small bead heads of the PTN formula and such-like, not only matched the realistic patterns, but quite often outfished them. There are reasons for this which I won't bore you with here; but suffice to say that the Edwards patterns remained in my fly box, albeit used a good deal less frequently than before.

What I will say is that whilst not necessarily the fly fisher's panacea I once thought them to be, these patterns are very worthwhile and I would never be without at least half a dozen of them tucked away somewhere. On the river in early summer when the Uprights and Yellow Mays are around, in pocket water (maybe teamed up with a weightier pattern on a dropper above), or in low, clear conditions when the fish are nervous; in all the above situations, the OE heptagenid is indispensable to the spate river fisher of nymphs. And there is something undeniably satisfying about the catching of fish on an imitation which represents a close copy of their natural foodsource. A couple of hours spent knocking a few of these together will be time well spent indeed.

Back to business!

12. We need to make the wingbuds now. Take a spoon-shaped marginal covert feather from the wing of a grouse and saturate it in head cement. Now start to smooth the feather between thumb and forefinger until it adopts a more elongated shape and the cement begins to dry. the result should look like this:

13. When dry, turn it upside down and tie in to the top of the body approximately halfway along.

14. Now apply your dubbing to the thread and dub on the body from tail to the root of the wingbuds. Follow behind with the ribbing material.

15. The next step requires care. Continue with the dubbing, covering the remaining body and thorax area of the fly completely. Try to avoid excessive buildup of the dubbing, but do ensure that the full width of the thorax is formed to suit the crossbar and thin skin strip. Periodic application of cement and squeezing down with tweezers helps maintain the all important wide, flat profile.

16. Time for the legs. Take three short lengths of spanflex and tie them in to the top of the thorax, perpendicular to the hook shank as you would pairs of spent spinner wings.

 

17. Now bring the grouse feather wingbud forward over the top of the legs and tie down. Try to make sure the legs are still evenly spaced and not bunched too much together by the wingbud.

18. Trim off the waste end of the feather and then bring the thin skin thorax cover back in the opposite direction, tying off at the same point.

19. After trimming off the waste end of thin skin and whip finishing, we are nearly complete. This last bit is probably the trickiest step of the whole fly - heat kinking the spanflex legs. First, release the tension on the vice jaws and rotate the fly so that it is hanging more or less vertically down wards, like this.

20. It's worth noting here that the following job is made easier if the batteries in the hot tip are halfway flat. It the hot tip glows orange quickly after switching on, then it is probably too hot and will melt the legs far too quickly making it almost impossible to kink them without burning them off altogether. We may have needed a full power hot tip to heat-ball the nylon crossbar earlier, but now is the time to take a battery out and put a nearly dead one in. Have a go on a waste piece of spanflex first - you should be able to hold the hot tip against the rubber for a couple of seconds until it begins to soften and kinks over. Obviously the spanflex will droop in the direction of gravity ie downwards, which is why we point the fly down in the vice - so the legs kink 'forwards'.
Once kinked, trim the forelegs to length. Don't worry if you've burnt one or two off - it may be frustrating to balls things up so late on in the tying, but it won't compromise the effectiveness of the finished fly. My box is full of heptagenids with missing limbs, I can assure you!
On this occasion I was lucky......although as mentioned earlier, the example below is rib-less as the spanflex broke late on in the tying.

The final act is to give the thorax cover and wingbuds a couple of liberal coats of 'hard as nails' vanish which toughens everything up and gives a nice translucent look to the fly. And that's about it really. As a tying exercise, it is almost all about proportion and the best way to get that right is to have a go at tying a few until you get the feel for it. I'm quite pleased with my effort today; usually after a long tying layoff, the main thing which suffers is my sense of proportion and it takes me a few false starts with deformed looking comedy flies to get back in the swing of things. Fortunately, I reckon I've got it about right here - not perfect by any means, but good enough to fool a few fish. I hope you found it as useful as I did enjoyable.

Right, time to find the deer hair. I owe a very patient man in Scotland a dozen balloon caddis.................

Step by step: Oliver Edwards heptagenid nymph variant - Part 1 of 2

I made a promise earlier in the season that I would post step by step tying instructions for the stoneclinger nymph that I use. It is basically a variant of Oliver Edwards' much lauded heptagenid pattern; maybe a bit easier to tie in some ways, but I have found it to be equally effective. Make no mistake though, this is not a five minute job. It's quite a tricky tie and although I'm not the fastest tyer I admit, one of these typically takes me around half an hour to forty minutes......including a few false starts, plenty of cursing, maybe a cup of coffee to keep me awake.

Of course, I knew all the above before embarking upon this exercise today; but still, it's that long since I did any tying that I had forgotten just how much practice counts when it comes to tying speed, neatness and proportion. I found this a bit of a challenge after months away from the vice and I apologise if my rustiness shows in both tying the pattern and taking decent photos of the stages. So what follows definitely ain't pretty, but hopefully it will illustrate the method well enough.

Owing to the interminable length of the process, I'll split it into two separate posts and punctuate with a brief discussion on the merits of the nymph, and when and where it works best. Hope you find something of use!

Materials List.

My materials differ slightly from Oliver's original version. This is partly due to simplification, partly a reflection of what I had to hand when I first tied this fly, and partly because I prefer one or two of the substitutions aesthetically. Of course, you are free to use whatever you wish to achieve the colouration and appearance you desire. This pattern is all about profile, or general impression of size and shape (GISS), and the slightly unusual construction method allows us to achieve the wide-headed, flat-bodied profile of the heptagenid nymph like no other pattern I am aware of.

Hook: Partridge K14ST in sizes 14 and 16 

Thread: Griffiths' sheer, dark brown

Thorax cover: mottled oak Thin Skin 

Thorax 'crossbar': short length of 20lb maxima nylon

Tails: pheasant tail dyed picric 

Ballast: fine copper wire

Rib and legs: Spanflex - medium ginger 

Dubbing: Masterclass - blend of shades #6 and #11

Wingbuds: grouse marginal covert

You will also need a hot tip cauteriser, plenty of thin, flexible head cement (I use floo gloo), some fine pliers or tweezers, and a thicker head cement such as 'hard as nails'.

 1. Sitting comfortably? Right, brace yourself. Vice the hook and run on your thread. Catch in three pheasant tail fibres on top of the shank and tie tie them down to the start of the hook bend. You want to be aiming to get the tails about the same length as the body - quite long in other words. 

*Remember that all the images below can be enlarged if you click on them, to get a closer view of what's going on*

2. Using the thread, split the tails equally so that they are nicely splayed, and drop a tiny dab of cement at their roots to help keep them there and strengthen the weak points slightly (Edwards uses badger hair which is far more robust,  bot not quite prominent enough in my view. Tied in this way, the pheasant tail is durable enough, I've found).

3. OE uses raffene for the thorax cover, but I like the mottled, shiny finish of the thin skin. Cut off a strip of width to suit the hook size. This is a #14 hook and the strip is approx 4-5mm wide. Now you need to cut it to a taper so that it can be tied in easily and doesn't crease or distort when it is folded back over the head later on. A bit of practice makes judging the proportions a bit easier.

4. Tie this in facing forward over the eye of the hook. Take tare to secure it so it doesn't want to spin around the shank, and make sure it is tied down right up to the back of the eye so that when it is pulled back later on, there isn't any unwanted hook shank showing.

5. Now take a short length of strong nylon line - about 20lb BS is ok - and tie it down figure of eight style to the top of the hook shank a short distance behind the eye. This is the 'crossbar' around which the wide, flattened head of the nymph will be formed. Don't tie it down too tight just yet, as it may need a tweak to centre it after the next step.

6. Now we need to 'heat ball' the ends of the nylon. Cut away both ends until just a mm or so longer than required, and then offer up either your hot tip or a cigarette lighter (I find the former gives better control, although you need fresh batteries in for it to be hot enough), and hold close enough to the end of the nylon to melt and form a blob. Repeat at the other end until the crossbar width looks correct, then centre on the shank using tweezers, before tying down firmly with additional thread wraps.

7. Tie in your rib material. OE uses a combination of ostrich herl and spanflex twisted together to form the abdomen - it gives a 'feathery' appearance which is intended to mimic the natural nymph's lateral abdominal gills . I have never been a fan of this method and prefer to use a more conventional dubbing and rib arrangement, or occasionally just a narrow strip of clear flexibody. I'm using spanflex here; you can use what the hell you like. This step is rendered slightly irrelevant by the fact that later on, the bloody thing breaks anyway! 

8. I now build up a nice taper to the full length of the fly, using the tying thread.

9. Catch in some fine copper wire. The above tapering of the thread acts as a base upon which to wind the wire. I think in recent years, OE has used flat lead to form the ballast of the fly, although I recall in the earlier edition of 'Flytyer's Masterclass', he advocated the use of copper wire. Either way, one of the important properties of both the lead and the copper is that they are malleable so that when wound on, they can subsequently be flattened quite easily with pliers. We wouldn't be able to do this if we just used the thread.

10. I find it easiest to just wind the copper on direct from the spool. Try to keep a neat taper, although don't worry too much if it looks a dog's breakfast (as does mine): careful dubbing later on will hide a multitude of sins! What we are trying to do here is build up a carrot-shaped taper from head to tail, which also needs to be regularly flattened out as the build-up progresses. Wind some on, flatten with tweezers/pliers and then carry on until it looks about the right profile. Now give it an all over covering of head cement.

11. In profile. Note the flattening.

Right, that's enough for now. Go and get yourself a brew and we'll reconvene in part 2.

Secret Stream

Everybody has a secret stream don't they? Well it always seems that way to me when discussions with angling friends inevitably turn to the matter of mysterious virgin waters and rods barely longer than your leg. There exists a strong spirit of exploration in fly fishing circles; a spirit which drives many of us on in search of some overgrown nirvana like schoolchildren exploring the woods in the summer holidays. I guess we all like the idea of stumbling upon something hidden, of finding trout in the unlikeliest of places. Casting a line in places most people wouldn't even bother to look, the master of your own piscatorial Lilliput.

Except that I have never really been captivated by all that fishing small streams business; the 2 weight rods, reels the size of a chocolate penny, giving a sporting chance to fish which would fit into a sunglasses case. I accept it is popular with many anglers, but it's just not my scene. When I stumble upon a John Beer article in Trout & Salmon, I invariably flick past it, admiring the lovely photos of tiny 'wild as the wind' brownies on the way. And when I delve deep for the reason, I am forced to admit that I am drawn to the unknown aspect of fishing fully grown rivers - the possibility that the next fish I cover might be three, four or even five pounds.......and not that little sprot I can see holding station in the middle of the biggest 'pool' for miles. I'm not solely a big trout hunter by any means and the delight of catching a trout of any size will never diminish as long as I can cast a line. It's just that all that farting about under trees and amongst the undergrowth to catch the 12 inch alpha male of the pool seems like a bit of a fool's errand to me when there are 'proper' fish to be had elsewhere. I feel a bit guilty about this I admit.

Shortly before the end of the season, something happened which went some way to changing my opinion on the matter. It wasn't a Road to Damascus moment by any means, but my visit to an almost unfished tributary stream proved unexpectedly absorbing and reflecting upon the experience a few days later, I was forced to admit that somehow, that tiny Beck had got under my skin a little.
I fished it more out of idle boredom than anything else. Actually, that's not entirely true because I didn't really fish it at all, not properly. I had followed the field boundary down to the edge of a meadow of completely ungrazed scrub land, and squeezing through an ancient wooden gate, entered into a barely passable jungle of chest-high nettles knitted fast together by impenetrable tangles of gosling's crotch. Just how long this copse had remained untouched by man was unclear; the skeletons of long abandoned and ancient farm machinery suggesting quite a long time indeed. Consulting my map, I found that even the mature trees hereabouts were named.

I remember once hiking to the far end of Cow Green reservoir, to fish the inlet of the infant River Tees. Anyone who has made that lonely excursion up into the sub alpine pastures of the high Pennines will testify that it is about as close to proper wilderness as is left in this country. Strangely enough, as I entered this untended tangle, I felt a similar level of isolation, despite being only a few hundred yards away from civilisation. It was strange, but in a good way and I hacked on through the undergrowth to catch a first glimpse of the secret stream.

What I found was delightful - a fully formed river in miniature, with deep, reed-fringed pools (deep enough not to see the bottom), undercut banks, overhanging trees, and cobbly glides of marl and silt. It looked very trouty indeed; and what's more, it looked like it could conceivably be home to one or two serious fish. My interest was piqued and I set about finding somewhere I could actually get within casting distance of the water.

It would be nice to say I found a few fish rising and then fooled them with a suitably scaled down outfit and a tiny dry fly. What actually happened was that I found a pair of trout rising in a tight spot beneath some alder branches and using my normal 8'6" 4-weight outfit and a size 18 Griffiths Gnat, managed to poke a horribly unorthodox cast into the shadows, only to prick the larger of the two fish and send the other one bolting for cover. I did however, manage to successfully fool the smaller fish after it resumed feeding half an hour later. It was barely eight inches long and was one of the bonniest little trout I have ever caught.

And with that, it had happened: I had sub-consciously slipped into the world of the small stream fly fisher. I had devoted far too much time and thought into catching a fish which would be too small to make a breakfast. I had marvelled at its pale, iridescent beauty, and was moved to take a photo which I include below, but which should really be accompanied by the title 'wild as the wind' or 'small but perfectly formed' or something.

As I sweatily thrutched my way back to the car, through the nettles and midges, I was forced to admit that there might be something to this small stream fishing after all. And sitting here now, wondering what the place will be like in early spring, and how big its residents grow in that fertile water, and whether I should invest in a rod that is shorter than I am; somehow, by osmosis, that little beck has embedded itself in my consciousness.

Now where's that John Beer article?

A final flurry

I fished a couple of times this week. With the weather set fair and the embers of the trout season about to be extinguished, I took the opportunity to step out into glorious autumn sunshine for one final hurrah before it all ends again for another year. I was hoping to sign off with a memorable fish or two, but although I thoroughly enjoyed myself, things didn't quite work out as planned.

Tuesday saw Rob Denson and I afloat once more on the enigmatic Malham Tarn. It's been a queer old season up there this time and the demographic of the resident trout population seems to have shifted significantly in a direction we never foresaw. Perhaps we have been lucky enough to witness a 'golden age' of sorts over the last three or four seasons where the fishing has been typically challenging, but the rewards occasionally too spectacular for words. For a long time I couldn't believe what I was seeing and to be frank, I kept shtum about the number and size of the fish we were catching in the possibly mistaken belief that the place might receive excessive angling pressure. But this year has seen an apparent backing off of the quality of sport, and an increased number of small fish which until recently were all but unheard of.

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing and I know I have touched upon this sort of thing before when discussing the impressive numbers of large River Eden trout versus dearth of younger brethren. I do find the whole subject fascinating; but this is not the place to speculate as to what is happening on the Tarn, what has caused it, whether it is positive and what we can expect in the coming years. The place has always been something of an enigma, a fishery which fails to conform to accepted norms in every sense. A handful of dedicated anglers know this and will continue to accept its challenges over the coming years, attempting to unravel some more of its many secrets.

Rob and I will certainly be amongst them, although Tuesday's outing did little to dispel the feeling that this has been a tough season. It was a nice day to be in a boat, but that's about it. We caught half a dozen fish between us, four of them skerrits. The sun beat down upon an almost flat calm in the morning rendering the exercise all but pointless. And later in the day, when a steady breeze got going, we were able to fish with more purpose......although we both agreed that it was with little hope. Sometimes, it just doesn't feel right. Whether it's the quality of light, the atmosphere, or some other intangible variable, sometimes that's how it is. As we humped our gear back up the hill from the boathouse, we both agreed that next May would be early enough to return to this special place.


I did have a booked boat for Thursday, the penultimate day of the season. But on Wednesday morning I phoned the Field Centre and cancelled, my mind turning once more to running water and a last shot at the wild trout of the Eden valley. It was a set of circumstances I hadn't expected to arise. So busy have I been at work that when I last cast a line on the river, it was still August and I had all but abandoned the hope of fishing another warm, still evening until sometime in 2012. But with the weather proving ridiculously warm for the time of year, and the Eden running relatively low and clear for the first time in ages, I couldn't believe my luck as I set out for a full day mooching about my favourite bits of river.

There was a time a few years ago when I would, with a full day at my disposal, have spent the whole time intensively fishing every inch of available water until such a time that I either ran out of daylight, or ran out of steam altogether and had to resort to a hit of lucozade and jaffa cakes to summon enough energy to peel my waders off. But I reckon I must be getting old and knackered (or maybe old and sensible), because yesterday, with the sun beating down and lifting the temperature into the mid twenties, I didn't feel particularly disposed to do anything much at all. For most of the day I ambled around contentedly and without anything even resembling a plan, excepting that come the lengthening shadows around 5pm, I knew exactly where I wanted to be.
In the meantime I took some invertebrate samples, sat under a tree for a while, flicked a team of nymphs here and there occasionally, and tried to take some interesting landscape photos (a task which ultimately proved beyond me). I even contemplated retiring to the Shepherd's Inn at Langwathby for a lunchtime pint and read of the paper. In the end, I settled on a cup of coffee and a twenty minute snooze in the car. I can't pinpoint the exact time in my life when I became satisfied with such small pleasures.

Later on and with a dry fly leader attached to my 4 weight, I set about catching a last trout of the season. Things were set up nicely for an evening rise: warm air which promised to remain so into darkness, a sparkling amber river, long shafts of fading sunlight through the branches of bankside beech and alder, a good number of late season stoneflies in the air, and trapped in the water's surface, thousands of tiny reed smut and beetles. I felt sure that once the light was off the water, a few fish would show interest. So I tied on a size 20 Griffiths Gnat and waited.
As it turned out, only a handful of fish chose to feast upon this soup of terrestrial minutae . Perhaps unsurprisingly they were grayling for the most part and I enjoyed some nice sport with fish ranging from half pound schoolies, up to a couple of brutes the bigger of which weight 2 1/4lb. Interestingly enough, they completely refused my initial offerings based on the maxim 'small and black' and after going through maybe a dozen patterns, I finally struck gold with a size 18 cdc dun tied using a pearlescent material for the abdomen called MOP rootbeer. With nothing on the surface big enough to be easily seen by the naked eye, and certainly no small olive duns around, it was an odd choice; but they wanted it and that was good enough for me.

What then, of my end of season trout? Well for long periods it seemed like I would have to wait until March for my next encounter with an Eden spotty; until at last knockings I finally found one rising on the crease of a back eddy. It took a good few attempts to get the drift line right, but when I did, the fish took confidently and then steamed off across and upstream so deliberately, I was powerless to stop it. With line emptying from my reel, I began to wonder if this was the fish of the season, until when I finally regained some semblance of control a good five minutes later, the fish at last surfaced and I was able to guide it towards the net. Unfortunately instead of the snout of a 5lb brownie, I was greeted by the lazily waving tail of an exhausted pounder - hooked in the bloody jacket! The hook must have slipped as the fish turned down with the fly, lodging firmly, just above the anal fin.

And that, as far as my trout fishing season is concerned, is pretty much that. Maybe in the coming weeks I'll come over all reflective and write a post of the season's highlights and learnings. In the meantime, I'll sign off with a few images of these last two outings.

At the helm of the good ship Hope; yours truly on the tiller

Tarn Sky

Wheatstraw bales in the Eden valley

A nice Eden grayling

The successful fly pattern - a small cdc dun

Finally, the trout that had me shaking like a flat-pack wardrobe!

I hope you all had a great season!
All the best,
Matt

Flying Solo

Things didn't turn out how I had planned. It had all looked so promising a couple of days earlier when the weather man predicted that a temporary break in the recent stormy weather was on its way, scoring a direct hit on the day I had put aside to go afloat in search of wild brown trout. What I hadn't bargained for was that this break in the weather would turn out to be so extreme that I would be faced with acres of flat-as-glass water, stubbornly sulking beneath a glaring, brassy sun.

Not that I was completely surprised. When I went to load the car that morning, I had opened the front door onto a day of complete misty stillness; and later on, driving up the valley, I looked anxiously to the treetops for signs of a breeze but was greeted instead as I passed through the villages, by steeply rising chimney smoke from the year's first woodfires.

This wasn't what I wanted. I wanted a warm wind to push the boat along briskly, to tease the wavetops into spits of foam, bringing the trout up into the surface layers where my wet flies would be, darting and glooping about in the oxygenated confusion. I wanted to ride the swell, dance the dance of the loch style flyfisher.

None of that was going to be possible of course, not today. The best I could hope for would be an occasional slight wiffle across the surface. Variable in direction and short lived; not enough to grip the boat and push it along in anything like an organised manner. Yes, a day of frustration surely awaited. I had seen it all before - suffered the ignominy of chasing wary shadows upon the stagnant horse latitudes of a flat calm lake. I had no appetite for it, so I loaded my kit into the boat, then left it behind and headed off up the hill  instead.

I spent the next couple of hours sitting in the warm fellgrass, my back propped against the summit cairn and soaking up the quiet atmosphere of the moorland, silent for miles around and stretching far into the distance to all four points of the compass. It might not have been what I'd planned, but it wasn't a bad circumstance all told. This summer has been abysmal around these parts. Not particularly wet, admittedly; but cold and windy for long periods, with an almost complete dearth of the long, warm summer days which we spend most of our winter dreaming about. But here on the top of Great Close, was the opportunity at last to recline with the sun in my face and only wheatears and meadow pipits for company. I took my time and absorbed every long minute with relish.

Around lunchtime, I decided that some fishing might be in order. The surface was now slightly disturbed by the gentlest of easterly breezes and although I knew the boat would fail to find purchase, would lazily yaw about untethered, I decided to give it best and set forth onto the still expanses. I had noticed an odd rising fish here and there. They would be nearly impossible to approach and likely melt away into the depths long before getting within casting distance. No matter, I like a challenge. I resolved to spend the afternoon mooching about quietly on the electric motor and make it my business to fool just one of those sporadic risers.

It turned out - not unexpectedly - to be the fishing equivalent of plaiting sawdust. With the motor running at quarter power, I odged along, flying my stealth bomber solo, one hand on the tiller, ten footer in the other. Whenever a fish popped up within range, I quickly shot the #16 crippled midge out into the slick, the motor still running - a kind of drive-by dry fly. And it worked...sort of. Four fish succumbed to this tactic, although none were large. They were all - to use a friend's terminology - skerrits; trout too small to know better. Their older brethren stayed well out of the way.

It was hardly satisfactory and I will be looking to return at least once before the season is done. With appropriate conditions there are few more invigorating pursuits than fishing from a drifting boat and I'd like to think that the end of September could yet throw up one or two last memorable moments before thoughts must turn to grayling and warm clothing. But I had enjoyed myself in a way. Upon reflection I think that after several weeks of working all hours and juggling various commitments, it was enough purely to be away from everything; and if that short lived dead zone in the weather had been the vortex which sucked me away from life's extraneous bullshit for a few hours, then it might have been poor from a fishing point of view, but it had served its purpose right enough.

Weird Quartet

This month's edition of Trout & Salmon magazine described some of the writing in this blog as, ahem, 'purple', which last time I looked was not a particularly good thing. So I'll be brief:

I fished the Ribble for a couple of hours yesterday, in uncomfortably windy conditions. In truth I didn't expect a great deal and only decided to head up-valley at the last minute when I unexpectedly found myself at a loose end late in the afternoon. Which is just as well, because most of the brief session passed off entirely without interest, the cold westerly wind taking all pleasure from proceedings, and the river's trout population (in keeping with my experiences of the last two seasons) seemingly very sparse indeed.

This apparent dearth of Ribble trout concerns me to be honest. I accept that I'm not best qualified to judge, having only fished the river maybe eight times in the last two seasons, but it would be a pretty impressive run of 'wrong place, wrong time' scenarios all the same. My returns have been limited to a handful of trout and grayling with a proportion of the former having been escapee stock fish from the syndicate water downstream. I have heard reports of better returns from some of our members, so hopefully it's a case of either my incompetence, or just bad timing. Our monthly invertebrate monitoring does seem to indicate a river in good health, so fingers crossed. But with so many clubs on the river insisting on artificial stocking policies, our beat - home to some of the finest game fish habitat on the entire river - should be one of the few to give a truer perspective of the Ribble's native population; and from what I've seen, it isn't a pleasing picture - especially when compared to some of the other river systems here in the north of England.

Yesterday's brief foray further added to my worries. Despite the difficult wind, the Ribble was in perfect ply following a slight overnight rise, and I fished a good mile of it on a brace of small weighted nymphs. Every cast into every crease and pocket had me expecting a fish at any moment, but by the time I had reached the bottom of the woods I had two salmon parr to my name, a miserable return. Finally I met with success in the confused water at the head of a favourite pool, although it was success of a weird kind and as such went some way to reinforcing rather than easing my concerns. In the space of a few casts I returned a nice cock grayling of towards 2lb in weight, followed immediately after by a fine sea trout, followed by - of all things - a small chub, and finally one of those nuisance stockies I mentioned earlier. Although their capture was pleasing (well the first three anyway), the statistics tell a sorry tale: four fish, and not one of them a native brown trout.

As I mentioned earlier, I haven't fished the Ribble much recently and am well aware that my poor returns are most likely down to my own failings, or just bad luck. I would love to hear from anyone who has a more positive tale to tell, either through the comments section here or the email address below.

matteastham@hotmail.co.uk

Excuses.

 I am a keen fly fisher. Therefore I am, like most other keen fly fishers, very good at making excuses for failure. I ruminated upon this fact whilst driving home from the river last night following a few hours of decidedly underwhelming sport. The river had under-performed, no mistake. I had my excuses at the ready - reasons why the sport was so damned slow. But then if I am honest enough to admit it, I had under-performed too; and although it was definitely not a night for easy pickings, I was forced to concede that I had been presented with a chance late on to bring proceedings to a satisfactory conclusion and quite frankly I had made a balls of it.

I seem to have spent much of my last few outings complaining about the state of the river. Too many times this summer I have found myself looking forlornly at high and coloured water and wishing I had made the journey 24 hours later. Other times I have found the river starting to rise midway through the session, effectively killing sport dead. Give me a clear and settled stream, I thought, and I will resume the capture of the big wild browns which populate these parts.
Well after a dry week, it looked very much as though I would get my wish last night. Sure enough when I caught my first glimpse of the river I was greeted by a beautiful sight - at just a couple of inches above summer level, the flow was bright and amber tinged, foamy and frothy and looking as trouty as it is possible to look. The atmosphere was warm and humid and a promise of great things was in the air. Over the tail of the nearest pool, an absolutely huge cloud of athripsodes caddis swarmed above the surface. I set to work immediately.

If my initial scout of the water fails to reveal rising fish, my usual default modus operandi  is to kick off with a brace of nymphs pitched upstream into likely looking seams and riffles until I receive signs from the residents that a change is required. So it was last night and the tactic produced a couple of 8 inch grayling, a couple of dropped fish, a very good trout which leapt clear and threw the hook, and a nice brownie of around the pound. I have to say though, that given the water I covered I had expected more. No, they weren't really having it and I consoled myself that the evening rise could start at any moment............

Except - and here comes the excuse part - just as things should have begun to hot up, a horrible, cold wind suddenly blew up out of the south west, bringing blue grey clouds and spots of rain and a drop in temperature of some 6C to single figures on the thermometer (when I examined the charts this morning, they showed that a small low pressure front had crossed the north of England and that winds had increased to around 20mph at nearby Kirkby Stephen). The clouds of spinners I had seen above the bushes earlier sought cover in the vegetation, the swarms of longhorns disappeared and the surface of the river became ruffled by the unwelcome draught. Bugger.

And then, in the half light, came my shot at glory. In spite of the conditions, a large trout was feeding in one of several tongues of current which issue from a rocky pool head. Close examination of the surface revealed that a handful of b-wo duns had chosen to brave the weather and ride the fractured current downstream. My target was responding to them in clusters of three or four rises in quick succession followed by apparent inactivity for a minute or two. By anticipating this pattern, I felt sure that the fish would be mine.

Except I hadn't appreciated how difficult achieving the correct presentation would be. My first few casts (deliberately short of the fish) dragged horribly, so confused where the micro currents either side of the trout's position. Normally, a slack line cast would sort this problem out, but when I took a bit of turnover off the delivery, the wind - blowing across and slightly into me - gripped the fly and blew it out of the narrow corridor of accuracy I needed to elicit a response. Try as I might, a decent presentation proved beyond me; it was time for a re-think. Time to head upstream.

A couple of minutes later, I had crept down to within ten yards of the fish. Fishing the dry fly downstream tends to be a 'one hit wonder' method which either proves immediately successful......or puts the target down. Lengthening line carefully and well to one side of the fish, I adjusted my angles, overshot the delivery, pulled back and dumped the fly a couple of yards above the 'danger zone', rod tip held high, the minimum of line on the water . It was pleasing to see the cdc dun drift untouched by drag for a few feet, and even more pleasing to see a huge snout break the surface to intercept it.

I have written here before about how I wanted this year to get back more to river fishing following a couple of summers spent increasingly afloat on stillwater. Enjoyable though the diversion has proved, I felt last season that when I did make it onto running water, my touch had deserted me - that is to say my modest competence levels were even more limited than usual! As in all such disciplines, practice is the key to improvement and I have been determined this year to 'get my eye back in' and outwit fish which would have got the better of me over the last couple of seasons - to become properly tuned in to the task in hand.
I experienced something of this feeling back in May and June when I enjoyed a purple patch with some large trout in sometimes difficult lies; and as my little dun disappeared into the impressive maw of this latest target, I have to admit to feeling just a tiny bit pleased with myself.

And then at the exact point I was about to lift the rod and set the hook, a gust of wind lifted my leader, billowing off the water and I struck into thin air. Perhaps surprisingly, the trout continued to rise.....until my next cast drifted through the lie untouched and the leader trailing behind spooked the fish altogether.

So a pretty poor performance, I admit; and  viewed alongside my failure a couple of weeks ago when I made a hash of things with that huge grayling, I have to wonder if a confidence-restoring session down the local stock pond might be in order. But then again, surely on this occasion Billy Wind should shoulder some of the responsibility also. After all, what is a fisherman without his excuses?

What a difference a week makes! I hadn't really noticed before, but returning to these shores after after a week abroad, the countryside looked decidedly tired to me - a sign that summer is past its prime. I recalled a passage from the diaries of Laurence Catlow:

"3 August
 I am perhaps prone to run ahead of the season, but I felt today that it was already late summer. I felt it from the rank and yellow and seed-laden grasses, from the pastures made spiky by sprouting thistles, from roadside banks tufted with untidy ragwort, from verges tall and pink with swaying willow herb and white with twining convolvulus. And the song of a wren rang through the heavy air like a defiant anachronism."

Summer must inevitably pass and I have to confess to a particular soft spot for the quiet autumn months of chill air and turning leaves. I was saddened though, driving home from the airport, to see that the light has gone by half nine and those seemingly endless summer nights spent wandering the banks of the river, are all but ended for another year.

Melancholy stalked me still the following evening when I drove up to Brougham to carry out the month's invertebrate monitoring. I rushed through the 5 sampling sites, eager to put the rod up and get fishing before darkness fell, and although I did manage a couple of hours amongst tentatively rising trout and grayling, it was a strangely joyless activity; I never felt comfortable or in control of my actions and a good half of the fish I cast to treated my advances with utter scorn. In half darkness I came upon a rising grayling in the midst of a long glide on the lower Eamont. I got a good look at her as she nudged through the surface film every minute or two and judging by the distance between her dainty dorsal fin and the tip of her sharply forked tail, this was no ordinary grayling but a really big old girl of 3lb plus. So here was a chance to redeem myself for a poor showing earlier on. The lie looked straightforward enough, the food source appeared to be of a sedgey description. I set to work with a low lying caddis pattern on the end of a 16 foot leader (deep lying grayling require a substantial 'lead in' of the dry fly; the longer leader is a must to prevent the tip of the fly line coming into the window of vision), and was confident of success.

First drift past....nothing; second drift.....she rose to a natural after my imitation had sailed past; third time lucky? Well no actually. The fish inhaled my fly, I lifted crisply and felt a microsecond of resistance before the grayling of a lifetime disappeared in an angry boil of water not to be seen again. I've had my share of big fish this season I admit, but this failure really stuck in my craw - a truly palm-sweatingly big grayling the likes of which I shan't see again for some time.
I never was much use with the ladies.

Challenging Times

July, the meadowsweet month, and the once urgent heartbeat of the trout fishing season has decelerated into the lazy, semi-conscious murmur of the dog days. For the bulk of daylight hours, the river resembles an empty house, lived in but currently unoccupied, the residents out for the day; and the wise angler concentrates his fishing effort upon the last couple of hours of daylight when the fish move out from their hiding places amongst boulder and tree root and take station on the feed lanes, the opportunity presenting itself to cast to some of the most challenging fish of the year.

This is unpredicatable fishing - real boom or bust stuff. Sometimes it happens, sometimes for whatever reason, it just doesn't. Quite often, an initially quiet evening continues to rumble on with no sign of activity as the shadows begin to lengthen in earnest, and the angler's resolve is tested to the limit -  a kind of Mexican standoff requiring patience and conviction, especially where a long drive home eventually awaits. For sure it can be tempting to leave when, with maybe less than an hour of light remaining, there are still no signs of a rise.....but it can be worthwhile to stick it out until the death as quite often a hatch of blue-winged olive duns, or a fall of spinners, or a hatch of caddis, can flick the 'trout on' switch, and suddenly it seems that every fish in the river is up and on the fin.

I was reminded of this last night. Whilst the rise was short lived and patchy, it's interesting to note that things only got going at about 9:45pm and for once this mad keen fly fisher - who under normal circumstances will wring every last minute from a visit to the river - was at one point close to throwing in the towel and going for a pint. The air was cool, the river was up and coloured and I feared the worst. A few hours chucking nymphs and streamers around had yielded fish sure enough, but as the sun dipped below the horizon and the temperature fell right away, it felt like time to pack in.

At that point I had returned maybe half a dozen grayling and a couple of trout. It had been hard going and I needed to work quite intensively to find an odd fish in pockets and on the current seams. None were large, a grayling of around the pound being the best of the bunch, but it had kept me occupied; although after so much of the season spent engaged in the presenting of dry flies, it felt a bit strange - and maybe a little unsatisfactory - to be spending more than a few minutes chucking nymphs around. Which in turn got me thinking about a piece I wrote last November extolling the virtues of the sunk fly. Isn't it strange how things work out sometimes?

Still, the challenge of catching fish in less than ideal conditions is a worthy one. With about 8 inches of peat-red floodwater still tailing off I might have been 24 hours too early for comfort, but I find that in these situations, the bold silhouette of a black nymph works a treat (in fact a black nymph works in all conditions, although most anglers prefer to stick with more natural olive and brown shades). The pattern below is one I have used for years and have absolute confidence in. It isn't actually solid black - the seal's fur used in the thorax is a shade of darkest brown ('ant black', dyed by a friend of mine*); and the abdomen is formed by wrapping krystal flash around the shank, which gives off a black-brown 'oil slick' look to the fly. Sometimes, if I can be bothered, I add a pair of jungle cock splits behind the head, but to be honest, I think it is the profile and dark, translucent tones of this fly which makes it so effective. I rate it as at least equal to the PTN and in coloured water, some way better.

 
Anyway, I digress. So the situation at 9:30pm was fairly grim. At such times, a single rising fish can give a point of focus. And it always serves to remain mindful that a single fish - particularly a big one - can in the blink of an eye transform a mediocre session into a memorable one. With this in mind, I delayed my premature capitulation and sat down amidst the long grasses at the tail of a favourite pool, taking time to change to a tapered leader, degrease tippet etc.............and eventually after chewing my way through a few grass stalks and taking some close up photos of a goat's beard clock; eventually a few b-wo and small dark olive duns began to emerge, followed - reluctantly almost - by a handful of rising fish. My window of opportunity was small and I set to immediately. An appropriately sized cdc dun worked well enough and in the coloured water, I was able to pick off each of the feeding fish in turn without spooking their friends. Most of them turned out to be schoolie grayling, but I did land a much better one of about a pound and a half and finally, a nice trout of a similar size. By 10:30pm it was all over - less than an hour of a job; and to refer to the analogy I used earlier in this post, neither boom nor bust, but something in between. Something neither unsatisfactory, nor entirely satisfactory. Such is the enigmatic nature of the river in July.

* So far as I am aware, 'ant black' seal's fur is not commercially available. If you want to try this pattern, black claret works well too.....or a blend of solid black and darkest brown, which is what I used before the ant black.

Back to the beginning......

I can't remember exactly what I had in mind when I started this blog in the summer of 2006. My son George had recently been born and great changes were afoot in the Eastham household. Where previously I had been able to fish nearly every Saturday while my wife was at work, suddenly the weight of adulthood and responsibility came to bear heavily on my shoulders. No longer would I be able to (nor want to) tear around the British countryside in search of new and exciting fly fishing opportunities. I'd had my time of freedom and greater, more rewarding, more challenging times awaited. That's not to say that I gave up on angling - far from it; the need to escape the pressures of modern life became, if anything, greater than ever before. It was just that every window of fishing opportunity now had to be carefully considered and planned. An embarrassment of temporal riches had collapsed beneath the weight of paternal responsibility and my piscatorial emphasis required a shift from quantity to quality.*

I can't be completely sure, but I think that may have been one of the reasons I started this blog. As a substitute for fishing itself? A means of wringing as much as possible from each snatched session? A result of the new-found introspection that comes with fatherhood? Possibly. At the time, it was ostensibly just a migration of the fishing diaries I'd kept for years, from paper to laptop. Looking back now, I think there may have been a bit more to it than that.

There was another significant factor which influenced the decision to commit my thoughts to cyberspace. Inspiration at the time was pretty thin on the ground, but there was one site which stood out. It was notable then as being one of the few fly fishing blogs around at the time, and it is notable to this day as a shining beacon upon what has become an ocean of mediocrity. Alistair Stewart's The Urban Fly Fisher blog (originally Urban Fly Fishing on the Kelvin), was the first of its kind in this country. It has deservedly received awards, plaudits and media recognition, and there are few fly fishing bloggers out there today who do not owe a debt of gratitude to Alistair for providing them with the inspiration to have a go themselves; I certainly do. And the fact that we were able to meet up this week made my normally solitary evening session all the more memorable.

For once, the river was quite kind to us. A warm sunny day gradually gave way to one of those summer evenings which we anglers dream about - all long shadows, warm air and delicately rising fish. The sport may have been compressed into a couple of short hours before darkness forced us home, but when it arrived it was steady enough and we were both able to return some nice fish. Insect activity was low key with only a few longhorn caddis seen all evening, plus an odd dun of the yellow may and pale watery. When the fish did start to rise, it was to tiny stuff trapped in the surface film. Exactly what, I didn't bother taking the time to find out.......and the exercise proved unnecessary in any case as emergers in the #16 size class were all that was required to elicit the desired response. It was leisurely going - taking turns to target feeding fish as the light faded; and Alistair was duly rewarded for his excellent casting and presentation when a cracking brownie of 2lb 5oz (shown at the top of this post) sipped down his cdc pattern, followed shortly after by a fish only slightly smaller. Meanwhile I seemed to be attracting the grayling with two successive fish around the 2lb mark surrendering slightly tamely to the net. In between were a number of smaller trout for both of us - in all a pleasant evening's action.

The highlight for me though, was getting to finally meet the chap whose superb writing I have followed for so long. Strangely, by the end of the evening I felt like I had known him for years. But then, such is the personal nature of the fly fishing blog that in a way, I sort of had. Alistair made an observation that the process of blogging has allowed him to fish with so many different people over the years who he probably wouldn't have otherwise met, forming some strong friendships on the way. I know exactly what he means. Fishing may be a largely solitary undertaking, but this branch of our sport also has a habit of throwing up thoughtful, generous people with whom it is a pure pleasure to spend a few hours in the joint pursuit of angling fulfillment and I count myself lucky to have met a few. Yes, Alistair was spot on and I owe him much for leading by example and unknowingly encouraging me to start this humble project. Because whatever my intention was in the first place; or for whatever reasons I continue to plough on churning out the same old, same old; I can rest easy in the knowledge that my fishing life is all the richer for the people I have met.......and that, for the time being at least, feels like ample justification.


*don't get me wrong here, I accept  - and am very grateful - that I still get out plenty........it's relative - I used to get out a lot!