April can be mild and pleasantly sunny or cold, hostile and windy. However, on this occasion, it was a bit of a mixture with a chilly wild and intervals of sun and a drop of hail too.
The river was lower than I had hoped but I had high expectations of some rising fish.
Early season trouting is traditionally expected to be best on the river from 11.00 am to about 2.00 pm as this is the prime hatching time for the olive duns. This proved to be the case on this day too.
As it was, the anticipated hatches never really materialised and the best the stream had to offer was just a few individual large dark olives (LDOs), some pale midges and the odd terrestrial insect struggling in the surface film.
As a bonus, a few spinners also came down later on at about 3.30 pm. I capitalised upon this with an old favourite of mine, the Retro dun...
Above: not many about - but a few LDO spinners showed up and the trout do like these...
Above: this old Retro dun (an odd but deadly dry fly that is dressed in reverse) is well chewed after being wet in the rivers of the north for many years - but it still works well...
I flicked my dry fly to feeding fish under some promising branches and was rewarded with several nice wild trout, the best being about 1 lb 6 ounces in weight.
Above: a split-winged variant of the Greenwells type of pattern that also produced trout...
Another fish on the dry fly retuned...
Gentle sunshine was rare but it warmed up the crops of wood anemone that carpeted the riverbanks.
I shall be aiming to visit this magical place again as soon as possible...
Yes, I can understand why you would want to take yourself off to this beautiful and peaceful setting.
ReplyDeleteI hope to visit again before too long...
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