Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2017 i Trout & Salmon

1 Join a 3 mm orange plastic tube and a 1.8 mm orange plastic tube with fluorescent orange floss and work back to the tag point, building a small tape. Tie in and wrap a Mirage tinsel tag and build an oval butt section with the floss. 2 Switch to black thread and tie in a section of light blue fluorofibre with plenty of tight wraps to smooth the body. Taper the tail by trimming both the left, right and undersides with your scissors. 3 Tie in the medium gold oval tinsel then the black holographic flatbraid. Wrap the braid tightly with overlapping turns to the front of the outer tube. Wrap the oval tinsel diagonally, firmly to the braid with 4 Tie in a wing of banana yellow tanuki…

“The local club has taken the decision not to stock fish in the river as part of a five-year plan to help the wild fish improve” A ROUGH TRACK led from the parking spot to Irongray Bridge and a long pool with shelving gravel on the near side. On the far side the water was dark, suggesting peaty depths. The surface reflecting the lush green of overhanging bushes and trees. A few small olives were trickling off. The damp air making it difficult for them to dry their wings and leaving them easy prey for hungry trout. Only the trout weren’t responding with much enthusiasm. There were a few rises here and there, but none of the steady head-and-tail sipping of confidently feeding fish. I opted for a size 14…

“All, repeat all, traditional flies are anything but close-copy imitations” IF YOU SCAN the many trout fly-tying sites on the internet you’d be forgiven for thinking that most modern wet-flies have been through an explosion in a paint factory. “Bling” is all the rage. I suspect there are two main reasons. First, rainbow trout flies have had a tremendous impact on traditional tying styles in the past 30 years. Second, there is the profound influence of the internet, which has accentuated the “flies to catch fishermen”. Flies posted on the web need to catch the eye, and the observers are not trout. Flash and twinkle, and bright and bold colours are encroaching into areas where subtlety and imitation (vague and suggestive) used to hold sway. One might be tempted to…

“It’s as if Scottish rivers and their riparian owners have been sleepwalking on the memories of game fishing as an elite pastime” TWO WEEKS IN the Seychelles on a swish catamaran exploring rarely visited atolls in November. The invitation is tempting. Virgin waters full of giant trevallies, permit and jacks, milkfish, yellowfin tuna, snapper and bonefish. I have all the tackle - the saltwater reels, rods, lines, flies and shirts to match the azure sea. For considerably more than twice the price of this Seychelles adventure, I spent 14 days in the spring (with another two washed off) up to my thighs in bone-chilling Scottish water. I hooked one fish, a fine spring salmon that I saw briefly before it arched on its side and shed the hook. Bad luck?…

“Anglers can leave work safe in the knowledge the trout are yet to stir” BLUE-WINGED OLIVES (B-WOs) are synonymous with summer chalkstreams where gatherings of spinners create a haze over the water, but they are also found on spate rivers, especially among mossy boulders and where weed is established. The nymphs will tolerate bare stones, too, where the flow is slow. The B-WO is sensitive to light and preyed upon by bird, beast and fin, and therefore, like other upwinged flies, it tends to lie dormant during bright days. As the sun sinks, the patient nymphs prepare for their perilous journey to the surface to morph into winged adults. For experienced trout anglers, of all the upwings, the B-WO is the summer’s headline act. In June and July, dusk stretches…

“Could it be that we have all been fishing with a long-winged Tosh?” Jimmi Lauridsen’s original pattern Tube Brass bottle tube Wing Monkey (substitutes are available), gold Flashabou (optional). Hackle Yellow cock Cheeks Jungle cock dyed yellow SINCE IT BURST on to the scene in the Noughties, the Dee Monkey has become the only Scandinavian fly that seriously rivals the Tosh and Willie Gunn in the contest to become the top pattern for early-season fish. I don’t think I am going out on a limb by claiming that this trio are the most popular spring flies on most Scottish rivers. Yet, having considered the wonderful Monkey in more depth, I wonder if we have been singing the praises of more than one pattern. Bear with me. It is important to…

CONTROL YOUR GRIP HODGMAN AESIS H-LOCK WADING BOOTS £209.99 Hodgman’s H-Lock removable sole system is an excellent innovation that allows you to switch between rubber, felt and studded soles using a single pair of wading boots. The boots are supplied with felt soles and Wadetech rubber soles. Additional studded rubber or felt soles can be bought for £44.99, and these studs are pre-fitted through the top of the sole making them far more secure than studs that are screwed in from the bottom in the standard way (you can’t later add studs to the plain soles because of their plastic uppers). The soles lock in place at two separate points and can only be removed if both locks are disengaged at the same time. This makes them very secure. They…

ESCAPE TO THE HOUSE ON THE HILL In Devonshire, midway between Dartmoor and the sea, is Brightley House, set on high ground and surrounded on three sides by the Torridge, on which there is fishing. Situated at Dolton between Great Torrington (nine miles downstream) and Okehampton (12 miles upstream) this thatched Arts & Crafts house provides three reception rooms, study, billiards room, main bedroom with balcony and bathroom, three further bedrooms and two bathrooms. Outside are a two-bedroom cottage and outbuildings. The land extends to 50 acres and includes an all-weather outdoor school, river meadows, pasture and woodland. The fishing extends to a mile of single bank and is considered to be among the best high-water fishing on the Torridge. Records go back for more than a century and the…

THIS YEAR THE Upper Clyde Angling Protective Association marks its 130th anniversary. There is much to look back upon, much to celebrate and with 120 miles of stunning riverbank under its impressive stewardship there is also a serious amount of fishing in which to lose yourself. In 1987, a special centenary booklet was produced, now digitised on the UCAPA website. In his introduction, author Tom McGregor quotes James Dalziel Douglas’s 1843 publication Salmon and Trout Angling, which describes the Clyde above Lanark as the best trout river in Scotland where fish of 10 lb are taken and “large fellows” of 3 lb and 4 lb are seen in almost every pool. Poaching by netting was a big threat as was, further downstream, the escalation of industrial pollution. UCAPA began life…

“Later that evening, over a bottle of wine we had a very Irish sing-song” IT’S NOT HEAVEN, but it’s not far off. I am in magnificent Connemara and at this moment I am standing below Aasleagh Falls, on beat 9 of the Erriff fishery. Away to the north the great Ben Gorm, which straddles the border between counties Galway and Mayo, is chiselled out against a cobalt-blue sky. Southwards, the Maumturk Mountains soar into the heavens to provide a panorama in purple from which it is difficult to look away. Between them is the deep, black Killary fjord. There has been rain and the water surging over the falls reflects the glowing ochre of a back-lit light beer. Here and there the heather shows boldly purple and the mountain ash…

THE RIVER: The Cairn offers wild trout fishing with the potential of catching a memorable fish and provides an interesting alternative when conditions for salmon or sea-trout fishing on the Nith are less than ideal. Higher up the river you will encounter lots of pocket water while the lower river consists of smoother runs and pools. TACKLE: Lighter rods, 3 wt-4 wt, are all that’s needed for the upper river while the lower river can comfortably be fished with a 4 wt. Try shorter rods of 7 ft 6 in-9 ft for upstream nymph and dry-fly while the extra leverage of 9 ft 6 in and 10 ft rods may be useful for downstream wet-fly and Spiders. Wading can be tricky in places but it is often possible to fish…

“Foston Beck, as true a chalkstream as any in England … where eyebrows are less censorious than those of some Hampshire fishers” IF YOU THINK of the Spider patterns of the North Country and where best to fish them, your mind’s eye will probably turn to the tumbling streams of the Yorkshire Dales, to rivers with names that somehow evoke the rough landscapes through which they flow, rivers like the Wharfe and the Swale and the Nidd; or the imagination may cast your Orange Partridge and your Poult Bloa over the broken waters of the Tees, or fish them through the eddying pools of border rivers such as Teviot and upper Tweed, or through the restless streams of Ettrick and Yarrow Water. Spiders were born for such rivers; they were…

CHANGE FLY-LINES Finding the right depth at which to fish your fly is critical, therefore you should carry a selection of lines. Many anglers don’t switch lines because it is hassle to do in the dark, but if what you are doing is not working, you need to ring the changes by making, quick, bold and instinctive decisions. A night’s sea-trout fishing can go by very quickly and if you carry on fishing your “friendly” floater with no results, you could run out of time to experiment and miss the most productive method. Line choice should be dictated by the depth at which a line will fish and also by the speed at which it will swing. A full fast-sinking line will get the fly deeper and keep it there.…

BEFORE I EXPLAIN my preferred stance, read my disclaimer: the most important factor when wading waist-deep in a powerful river is safety and your number-one priority should be stability during the cast. Riverbeds have many permutations, from small gravel to huge rocks that need careful navigation, therefore no one stance is suitable in all conditions. Now that I’m covered, let’s look at the options. There are two common stances in speycasting: open and, my choice, closed. In both instances, let’s imagine that the right hand is uppermost on a two-handed rod. The open stance leads with the left foot forward. I’ve seen this stance used to good effect, particularly in distance speycasting when advanced casters are using a single spey with a big angle change. This stance is effective in…

Q HAVING FISHED big reservoirs all my life, I find that high stocking levels can make fishing too easy, especially early in the season. I’d like a new challenge and hope to target wild trout in Ireland or perhaps Orkney. What will be the biggest difference that I’ll notice? Mark Brewster, by e-mail A: IF YOU were to travel to Orkney, I suspect you might be surprised by the similarities between the fertile waters of (say) Harray and your reservoirs. The skills gained by the islands’ top anglers have been easily transferred to targeting rainbows; as their success in many major competitions on the mainland shows. It may shock you, but the tactics you’ll use may be very familiar and although the trout may be smaller, a stunning 14 oz…

“ A modern five-weight is generally quite a powerful rod best suited to larger rivers like the Tweed or Annan” DON STAZICKER Derbyshire-based Don is a highly experienced trout fisherman, fly-tyer and instructor. He is widely travelled and has guided extensively in the USA. He also makes fly-fishing videos (flyfishing lessons.tv). RIGHTLY OR wrongly, the 9 ft five-weight rod remains the most popular length and line rating for UK river trout. With the advent of weight-forward lines and the advances in carbon-fibre technology a modern five-weight is generally quite a powerful rod best suited to larger rivers like the Tweed or Annan, particularly when faced with stronger winds, or those chalkstreams stocked with larger-than-average trout. In this test, the characteristics we were looking for were: easy casting, feel, accuracy, ability…

SCANDINAVIAN-STYLE FLIES have become more popular in the UK, but I still come across anglers who are turned off by them, believing they’re too big and heavily dressed for normal fishing conditions, compared to the flies favoured in the UK. However, while fishing in Swedish Lapland, I’ve met many Swedish anglers who are also offended by the heavily dressed style. I have been lucky enough to learn from them, gathering knowledge of other patterns and sizes to use in various conditions. Fishing light, mobile, slim-winged and translucent flies on sinking lines is common practice in Sweden and some like to add balance by focusing all the weight at the front with cones or short, metal tubes. We tie these flies in lengths from 1.5 cm to 10 cm with an…

ACCOMMODATION Aasleagh Lodge is a beautiful 19th century Victorian country house hotel adjacent to the fishery. It has nine comfortable bedrooms and two self-catering cottages. However, because of a change in the fishery lease (now controlled by Inland Fisheries Ireland) the lodge and cottages are closed in 2017. There are several Great Fishing Houses nearby if you yearn for old-fashioned luxury; notably, Lough Inagh Lodge, Delphi Lodge and the Ballynahinch Castle Hotel. For those on a budget, Connemara is full of small, welcoming B & Bs, but book these in advance in the high season. Delphi Adventure Resort is five miles from the fishery, offering walking, mountain biking, climbing, canoeing, surfing, snorkelling, adventure trails and archery. FISHING Not a noted early-spring fishery, Aasleagh gets good fish in April-May. Summer grilse…

“There is no river in Great Britain which affords so many facilities to the angler for the pursuit of his art as this far famed Borders stream” - Tom Stoddart, angler and author, c.1852 WHEN WRITING ABOUT the Tweed it is easy to run out of superlatives. Its rod catch of salmon and sea-trout is greater than any other river and it can boast probably the largest salmon ever caught on rod and line, as well as the largest sea-trout and the biggest day’s catch ever made. It also has more beats and boatmen/gillies than any other, the longest fishing season of any other river and can claim to be the cradle of the birth and popularising of salmon fishing with the fly, a sport that it has spread…

BIG RIVER TROUT are like buses in a Lakeland village - they show up once in a blue moon. With a north-westerly wind, the day hadn’t looked promising and I’d begun to question why I was out at all. I was on my local Cumbrian stream and after three hours I’d had one small trout. It was late April and prime hatch time, but bright skies had put the kibosh on any hope of upwinged flies. This was about to change. Shortly after 1 pm, a burst of grannom pupae made a charge to the surface. It was as if someone had flicked a switch. I scurried to the nearest pool, but despite the hordes of grannom, not a fin stirred. “It has to be that ruddy breeze,” I thought.…

BRITTANY OFFERS BRITS more than a standard beach holiday. Beyond its wonderful rugged coast are beautiful stone-built towns and villages surrounded by rolling green fields and dense woodland. It’s a part of France that’s blessed with numerous rain-fed rivers populated by wild brown trout and even runs of sea-trout and salmon. Having holidayed in Brittany many years ago I had a vague idea of the quality of the trout fishing but last summer I fished it with Philippe Dolivet, who has lived in the region since childhood. I first met Philippe when he became editor of Plaisirs de la Peche. Sadly, the title is no more and Philippe has turned his fly-fishing talents toward guiding and tuition. As a newcomer to trout fishing in Brittany I couldn’t have been in…

ENOUGH POLITICS Like many anglers in Scotland, I was also disappointed with the Scottish Government’s failure to implement Wild Fisheries Reform (T&S, April). However, unlike Mr Banks of Lochwinnoch I did not see this as a green light to bring politics into the debate, which I do not believe was ever the editor’s intention. Indeed, since the publication of Mr Banks’ letter, political events have overtaken him in the form of an impending General Election. I am no apologist for the Scottish Government, or any other government for that matter, but your Lochwinnoch correspondent has seized upon the Editor’s Letter in an attempt to introduce political debate in the Letters column of an angling magazine. The expert witness from Lochwinnoch even claims he does not fully endorse the editor’s views…

“Make one at home and using only your hand, flick it across the room. I'm sure you'll be impressed with the result” SHOP-BOUGHT TAPERED leaders are good, yet for better turnover and fly presentation I believe it’s better to knot one together yourself - but in a different way to that you might imagine. Shop-bought leaders are not without flaws. Knotless and tapered they are made by extrusion and although the machines used can accurately set tip and butt diameters, the intermediate taper is often inconsistent from batch to batch. Butt sections can also be difficult to straighten from the coils in which they become set in their packets. Some leaders also have complicated tapers for specific uses, which can cause more problems than they solve: for example, a leader…

Q WITH THE increasing cost of quality jungle cock capes, I’ve been thinking about the photo-printed plastic variety. Have you tried them, and if so, are they as good as the real thing? Donnie Munro, via e-mail A. I’M OH so tempted to abuse my position by suggesting I’ve tried the fakes and found them to be even better than the real thing. In the hope that reducing demand for the real thing would cause prices to drop... But I’m more honest than that, (just) and truth be told, yes, I have tried them. Or rather, I’ve tied two or three flies with them. But that’s as far as it ever got. They were never wetted because when I looked at them, I didn’t see a fly adorned with jungle…

“I like the middle dropper to catch the eye… Brash and flash can pay dividends” Hook Fulling Mill 31531 (Black) or Kamasan B175 Tail Golden pheasant topping, straightened Rib Medium silver Mylar Body Black seal fur Body hackle Furnace hen Cloak and Throat Bronze mallard Thread Black I WONDER why we bother. To experiment, that is, at the vice and on the water in pursuit of the holy grail of colour combinations. In terms of wet-flies and wild brown trout, that score was taken care of many moons ago: black and silver. Is it any coincidence that three of the greatest, if not the greatest wet-flies ever devised - Black Pennell, Bibio, Kate McLaren - feature black and silver as their base? It has to be said, though, that all…

Tadpole-sized buzzers hatching on Chew England & Wales BORDER ESK THE RIVER has been very quiet. The odd salmon and some sea-trout have come in but only in small numbers. Fishing the Cauldron beat, John (Alex) Coulthard caught a 7 lb 8 oz salmon on a spinner. The Irvine House beat produced a 7 lb salmon for Mr Dunn, also on a spinner, in the Boat pool. These are the only fish I have heard about from the river in April. Sea-trout can usually slip in despite the low water. June will see the night-shift rods out so let’s hope the fish arrive in numbers. – BORDER ROD. BRISTOL WATERS WITH COLD winds the predominant feature in April, it is pleasing to report that fishing has been really good…

“Only very occasionally does one hear a lucid and compelling argument irrefutably constructed and irresistibly delivered” I WAS WATCHING the final round of the US Masters at Augusta, Georgia on the telly a few weeks ago. Which means golf, for those of you who are even less enthused about such things than I am. I don’t watch sport on the box as a rule; actually, I don’t tend to watch anything very much on the television these days. The news is all deeply questionable and unremittingly depressing anyway. Any current affairs programme that involves politicians being canvassed for their opinion about anything is likely to have me throwing things at the screen. Not, I hasten to add, because I disagree with what they say necessarily, to the extent that they…