Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2018 i Trout & Salmon

NO. 2 RICHARD WADDINGTON (1910-1999) Richard Waddington was a well-known proprietor of estates in Scotland and a manager of grouse moors and salmon rivers. A fisher of vast experience, he put much emphasis on the philosophy and psychology to be applied to the art of catching salmon. But his approach was eminently practical. Having read his books earlier this week, his words were ringing in my ears when I hooked a Dyfi salmon on a light trout rod this afternoon, fishing from a high bank without a net! “Once the fish is on its side it is yours. It is beaten and easy to tail by hand.” Well, of course, he was right, and it was! “The relationship between size of fly, volume of water, temperature, oxygen content, what the…

Sometimes old names for flies are more evocative than their modern monikers. That’s certainly the case for the Small spurwing (Centroptilum luteolum). Its current name is derived from the adult having a small spur-shaped hind-wing, but it was once called the Pale watery, Little sky blue dun or Little amber spinner. The Small spurwing is widespread and common, found throughout the British Isles. It has a more localised distribution in Scotland, where it is more often encountered in standing rather than running water. Nymphs swim in short, darting bursts among the sandy substrate, or climb water crowfoot and other water weeds. Once mature (body: 6-8mm, wing: 5-7mm) they emerge from the surface throughout the day before flying to bankside vegetation and transposing to a spinner. In summer they often delay…

IT’S DIFFICULT, WHEN STANDING ON a riverbank intent on fishing your favourite pool, to see things as others see them. Imagine - well you don’t have to imagine on lower beats - looking down the pool at a bobbing bewhiskered head, its moon-eyes returning your gaze. For a large swathe of people, the bulbous form of a seal is the embodiment of cute. Basking on the bladder-wrack at low tide, the seal may not impress as a hunting machine. But to my prejudiced eyes, the animal I’m looking at is a barely-disguised sack of reconstituted fish. I’m not imagining cod, crab or any other sea-living species dissolving in its digestive juices, but silvery slabs of salmon and sea-trout, snatched from their migratory path. That might explain how I could so…

I WISH I KNEW MORE ABOUT birds. I’ve got a fair armlock on the ones that fetch up in my garden: it’s all the others that elude me from time to time - the various big black jobs, scores of small brown jobs and half-a-dozen more-or-less white seagulls. Only they’re not called seagulls, apparently: to blokes who know about birds, they’re “gulls”. Brian knows about birds. He’s a wildlife and fishing guide in the corner of north Wales between the Rhinog Mountains and the sea. On Saturday mornings he guides a wildlife walk in the fields and foreshore around the seaside hamlet of Llandanwg. On the last walk he’d noticed a scatter of large birds working across the fields behind the dunes. Jackdaws, herring gulls and lesser black-backed gulls, he…

Student obsession By Dalton Tice IT WAS A LATE MORNING in February and I was awoken by the ominous River Monsters theme tune as Jeremy Wade recounted whispers of a 30ft grass carp rumoured to have consumed an entire school bus in a remote Texan settlement. While savouring the last of a greasy, horsey tang of kebab on the back of my throat, a kind gesture from the previous night’s rugby social, I was interrupted by the arrival of a letter. A surprisingly prestigious investment bank had taken a fancy to my “extra-curricular interest in chironomids” and was inviting me to undertake an internship in London and a summer deprived of angling. The internship adhered to its reputation. No fishing was had, but if fly-fishing was my Bristol wife then…

“Rabbit, on the other hand, clogs easily and sinks” Q I’ve just started fly-tying and would like to know which materials you wouldn’t be without Dave Preston, via email A My favourite material is seal fur. As a keen dry-fly fisher on stillwaters, it gives me everything I look for. It holds floatant well - one application can last most of the day. It also dyes extremely well - my fly-boxes resemble an artist’s palette with various shades and colours, including clarets, fiery browns, reds and ambers in one box, and yellows, greens and many shades of olive in the other. I seldom use a single colour - my fly bodies are often a mix of three or four colours. The translucency and vibrancy of seal fur when held up…

LIKE A FAST-FADING photograph, a little piece of fishery history is slipping away when you realise you are one of the last to remember cherished angling anecdotes, told in your formative years by older, wiser and now departed individuals. At the same time, dusty images of men holding magnificent fish, frayed catch records and minutes of syndicate meetings are being cleared from silent houses, lost to landfill. Little is as well documented, secure in time, as Walton and Cotton’s wonderful “playtime” activities on the hallowed Dove at Beresford Dale. Sharing its birthplace on Axe Edge, the lesser-known Dane courses in the opposite direction, but much of its recent piscatorial history, and that of neighbouring sandy streams, seems to be flowing ultimately towards a sink in time and space. “The gem…

I thought I'd share my biggest catch to date with you. On Friday, July 27, I should have been on jury service, but to my delight we were dismissed on Thursday until Monday morning. With a forecast of cloudier and cooler conditions after weeks of red-hot days I thought it was an excellent chance to get in some fishing, so I popped down to Bristol Water's Barrow Tanks, only 30 minutes away. I chose the tanks over Chew or Blagdon because being a novice the access and casting from the bank is easier. I arrived at 6am and headed to tank Number 2. Things looked good, but the trout had other ideas and didn't put in an appearance all morning. By 10.30, the sun had broken through and it was…

Everything you need near Perth The Fossoway Estate at Yetts o’Muckhart in Kinross-shire, close to motorway links to Perth, Edinburgh and Glasgow, provides trout fishing, pheasant shooting, duck flighting and roe deer stalking. Kinross is six miles, Perth 20 and Edinburgh 30. In its present form Fossoway Lodge provides four reception rooms, conservatory, master bedroom with ensuite dressing room and bathroom, another bedroom with bathroom, five other bedrooms, two bathrooms and shower room. There is planning consent for the Lodge to be re-modelled and extended to include a four-car garage and gym. Gardens and grounds include a three-bedroom Gardener’s Cottage, small loch, barbecue hut, summerhouse, all-weather tennis court, stabling and kennels. In all the estate extends to 198 acres of which 53 acres are woodland, planted with advice from the…

DAVID THELWALL After a lack of fishing this summer, Derbyshire Waters reporter David plans to visit the rivers Dove and Derwent. He's also looking forward to a day on Ladybower Reservoir, which he has organised for Thornton Fly Fishers. Weather permitting, the club should enjoy productive boat fishing at what is a magnificent upland venue. PETER GATHERCOLE Faced by tough conditions, photographer Peter has been weather watching. It has paid off with successful dawn starts to beat the heat on Eyebrook and Grafham reservoirs. He has also enjoyed a trip to the Eden, getting great scenic shots and images of the river’s beautiful brown trout. DAVY STINSON Drowes and Melvin correspondent Davy has finished salmon fishing this year but intends to round off his season by trouting on loughs Erne…

SEPTEMBER 28-30 Glasgow Angling Centre Open Weekend The Point Retail Park, Saracen Street fishingmegastore.com OCTOBER 14-NOVEMBER 30 Salmon & Trout Conservation annual online auction  salmon-trout.org/auction NOVEMBER 3-4 European Sport Fishing Show UWE Bristol Exhibition and Conference Centre, Bristol europeansportfishingshow.com NOVEMBER 10-11 The Irish Fly Fair Galway Bay Hotel, Upper Salthill, Galway irishflyfair.co.uk NOVEMBER 17 Grayling Society open day at Orvis Stockbridge store  orvis.co.uk FEBRUARY 9-10 British Fly Fair International 2019 Staffordshire County Showground bffi.co.uk…

JOHN JAMES and his older brother William were sons of an Alnwick lawyer, also called John James, who became Coroner for North Northumberland. On leaving school, the boys were apprenticed to the engineering firm of Sir William Armstrong & Co in Newcastle. Sir William, later Lord Armstrong, was one of the great engineer-inventor-entrepreneurs of his time. He originally trained as a lawyer in London before returning to Newcastle and joining the law firm of Armorer Donkin. His interest in engineering never waned, and he tinkered in his spare time. His first invention was the Armstrong Hydroelectric machine. But his first real success - a piston engine for driving an hydraulic crane - was said to have initially been inspired by his observations at a water mill when he was fishing…

The fishery: Abercothi Estate at Nantgaredig, near Carmarthen, comprises three miles of mainly double-bank fishing with 40 named pools on the Towy and a mile of the Cothi. There are three daily rotating beats (Llwchgwyn, Abercothi and Junction). Beats change over at 7am and a maximum of five rods are permitted. Sunday fishing is allowed. Season: April 1–October 17. All salmon caught before June 16 must be released (catch-and-release only after October 7). Gillies and guides: A full-time gillie is available to assist rods generally and show them the fishery. However, he may be needed for general bankside duties and to help with other beats from time to time. A one-to-one guide and instructor can be arranged in advance. Fishing: Fishing is £120 per rod per day or £480 per…

I HAVEN’T THE FOGGIEST NOTION where this one came from, so apologies in advance if anyone thinks I’ve pinched their creation. The reality is that this exact fly, and slight variations, will be in every self-respecting dry-fly angler’s box. It’s been in my armoury for such a long time that, I kid you not, when I whisper “black Klinky thing” it jumps out and ties itself to my leader. It has been catching fish for me from Chew to Orkney to the rivers of Iceland for a quarter of a century and is showing no signs of slowing down. It’s 35 years, give or take a year, since Hans Van Klinken unleashed his masterpiece on an unsuspecting world. It wasn’t the first parachute dry-fly on a curved hook, but it…

WHEN A FRIEND ASKS “What fly shall I use?” while opening a box to reveal a tangled mess of patterns pointing every which way, it can be tricky to work out what exactly is in there. The way our eyes and brain scan the world makes it easier for us to find things when they are arranged in an organised manner. Presented with a large number of coins and asked to calculate their value you would find it virtually impossible to visually scan all the coins and add them up in your head. Instead you would sort them into groups of similar coins each containing the same number of coins. Adding them up would then be simple. Interesting, then, that many of us don’t do this with our fly-boxes. This…

IT’S A UNIVERSAL TRUTH I’ve just made up that the only antidote to angling is more angling, only angling of a different kind. Battered, frozen or sweltered by the weather of 2018, for instance, I became … not bored, exactly, but stalled: stalled with the ice and cold of March and early April; with continual northerlies which became equally chill hopeless easterlies; with the recalcitrance even of stocked rainbows; stalled with the relative lack of natural flies; with sullen calms and the sudden arrival of summer without a preceding spring…. There came a time in July when I shrugged on the wading jacket with what, for me, is a vanishingly rare emotion: indifference. It was therefore time to escape not merely England’s weather (which by July had become sulkily tropical)…

SINCE ITS FIRST APPEARANCE during the 1940s the Willie Gunn has become one of the most successful salmon flies in the world. I’ve even seen a friend catch huge king salmon with them in Alaska, just to prove that Pacific flies don’t need to look like Christmas tree decorations. The original fly was designed by Flight Lieutenant Dusty Miller for Rob Wilson of Brora. It was meant to be a hairwing version of one of his favourite patterns, the Thunder and Lightning. He sent a small selection of hairwing versions of classic flies to Wilson’s shop for approval. Willie Gunn was a local estate gillie who popped into the shop to buy a few flies to fish the River Brora. His eye was immediately drawn to the “Thunder and Lightning”…

Birkin Fly Fishers control many miles of the River Bollin, Birkin and Mobberley brooks and have vacancies. Email: terrydudley5@btinternet.com Peover Eye Streamfishers Club has 30 members and roughly one-and-a-half miles of well-managed water on the Peover Eye. Email: simonjhilton@talktalk.net Wybunbury Anglers has access to around six miles of the Checkley Brook, a tributary of the upper Weaver. Tel: 07504 346 883. Formerly Buglawton Trout Club, Eaton Flyfishers have been fishing the upper Dane for more than a century. They have 50 members and fishing on about three miles of the river. Tel: 07443 580 861. Email: eatonflyfishers@gmail.com…

I have been delighted to read in recent months about moves in the tackle business to recycle and reduce plastic waste. They've prompted me to look in my tackle bag to see what I own that might end up in landfill or the oceans. Short answer: a lot. It was my choice to buy the stuff. But as my awareness grows, I think the burden of changing the materials we use in products and packaging must start with the makers and Government. Cost and hence price are significant drivers, but I think much can be altered without affecting a brand's success. As anglers, we can help by placing greater emphasis when we buy on the materials used in the tackle and hence reward thoughtful manufacturers. We need to encourage marketeers…

The only monthly record of catches and news from the major fisheries of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland England & Wales BORDER ESK CATCHES ON the Buccleuch Estates fishing were encouraging after significant amounts of water attracted them in from the Solway. Heavy rainfall over Eskdalemuir and the surrounding area, brought the river up on a number of occasions. Early August saw several good lifts of water and then again from August 13 for over a week, consistent levels from 1ft-2ft kept the river in ideal order for running fish. Early August saw R Booth catch four sea-trout to 2lb 8oz on the Willow Pool. John Barker caught salmon of 14lb and 9lb on fly and then on a later visit landed two further salmon. John Scott had a brace…

EIGHT WORLD records were broken at the 2018 Fly Casting World Championships at Port Haverigg Marina in Cumbria on August 17-19. Think you put out a good line? The winner of the men’s 18ft rod spey class, Norwegian Geir Hansen, broke the world record with a mighty 76m (83-yard) cast. Some 114 competitors from 20 nations took part in the bi-annual event. Sadly, several Russians were unable to compete because of current visa restrictions. Among those attending were well-known fishers Ally Bremner, Marina Gibson, Andrew Toft, Gerard Downey, James Chalmers and the multiple world casting champion American Steve Rajeff. Swede Bernt Johansson won the men’s trout distance (9ft rod, 5wt line) with a cast of 44m. Anna Hedman, also from Sweden, won the women’s event with a 40m cast. The…

Where did you start fishing? Apart from pulling the odd gudgeon out of the Shropshire Union Canal my first real fishing memory is of the Derbyshire Wye with my Dad and his mate Sid. Sid knew what he was doing, we most certainly did not; fish were caught but I suspect Sid did the catching. Why do you enjoy fishing? I am a terrible fisherman, poorly prepared, impatient, clumsy, ignorant of tackle and tactics and (I’ve no idea why) devoid of luck. I love fishing because none of the above matters one jot. What are your greatest fishing achievements? Being invited back. My companions are, without exception, kinder, cleverer, funnier and more generous than I am. They also catch fish; I often wonder why I am allowed to tag along.…

A SALMON WEIGHING perhaps 45lb has been landed on the Drynachan beat of the River Findhorn. It is a major contender for this season's Malloch Trophy. Sandy Keilloh, from East Sussex, caught the cock fish on a size 12 Stoat’s Tail double from Veracity pool at 10.20am on August 18. It was the final day of his trip with fishing companions Ronnie Shannon and Gordon McDonald. The fish made several runs, at one point surging 80 yards up the pool and only stopping when it reached the shallower water in the neck. He said, “When we eventually caught sight of the fish, it was clearly very large and looked a bit big for the net. So much so that the first attempt to get it in failed as it simply…

CLEARING OUT A LONG-FORGOTTEN drawer in a fishing hut the other day I came across an old catch-return card from one of the first River Test beats I managed. It was printed on thin card and the keeper would hand it to you at the start of each day. Somewhere close to your point of departure there would be a crude letterbox into which you were instructed to return your completed card at the end of the day along with “anything else”. No coincidence that the card was roughly the same size as a £10 note… Flipping it over I read the fishery rules on the rear. No.4 caught my eye: “All grayling MUST be killed.” The capitalisation and the underlining are not mine. That is how it was printed…

SINCE NORMAN IRVINE devised the Half-Hog, a significant variant of the Hedgehog, in the 1990s, this style of dressing has developed a small but dedicated following. It is little wonder. The Half-Hog is one of the most versatile patterns available. It can be fished as a wet-fly, nymph or dry-fly (emerger). And it works just as well for rainbow trout as for brown trout. Fishing H-Hs requires delicacy. You can fish them successfully off fast-sinking lines if you so desire but, primarily, they suit low-density lines much better. And the dressings are semi-imitative, so they can stand close inspection by fish, thus slow and static retrieve-styles won’t jeopardise your catch returns. Best of all, they are a doddle to tie so long as you obey a few important rules. Norman’s…

THE UNDERTAKER IS A Canadian pattern created by Warren Duncan, of New Brunswick, in the late 1970s. You have to love the name - it’s one of my favourites and suggests certain doom for any fish that makes a mistake. It’s sombre with a unique body and is an option for low water in autumn. The peacock herl is inspired and gives a little blink of colour and sparkle. Tying in the herl is simple - although be careful with the tension as it can break - in my case just as I make the final wrap. I haven’t fished it much - for no other reason than there are many flies and it isn’t possible to fish them all. Nonetheless, it is an attractive fly, which has a good…

Nick Hart has been a guide for over 20 years. Last year he swapped his waders for chinos to became Farlows fishing manager. He has fished all over the world, including Argentina, New Zealand, Montana, Louisiana, the Bahamas and the Pyrenees. 1 Liberate the fly-box The old Scouts motto “Be prepared” should apply to every overseas trip. However, staring at umpteen concoctions of fur and feather can be bewildering. Carry a mothership fly-box instead and decant to a smaller, on-the-water box, stocking with flies that the pre-trip literature and guides recommend. 2 PRACTISE CASTING This may sound obvious advice but drawing on my experience as a guide I’ve no hesitation in recommending a thorough casting tune-up before a big trip, no matter how experienced you may be. Research the…

■ Quality of hackle is nowhere near as important as barb length of hackle, which should be about the same as the distance from the eye to the hookpoint. Three or four turns will be enough for a top-quality hackle with a high-density barb count. Up to six turns may be needed for hackles with a lower barb count. ■ It’s important to remember that the hackle floats the fly, not the post, which is only there to wrap the hackle around. On that basis, use anything that will do the job. Cheap poly yarn is just fine. I like to tie my posts on the slim side, and crop them short, but others like to use them as a sighting aid, and leave them longer, and even use different…

GROUP FLIES together, for example, by having a box for ephemerid nymphs. Within this box the flies can be arranged into smaller groups by size, colour, weight or any other characteristic that helps you find the fly you want when you want it. Characteristics to consider. • Water type: streams, rivers and stillwaters. Boxes for specific venues. • Season: spring, summer, autumn, winter • Fish species: trout, grayling, salmon, pike, carp, saltwater. • Fly type: dry-flies, wet-flies, nymphs and streamers. • Insect species: mayfly, caddis, stonefly, midge, terrestrial. • Life cycle: lava, pupa, adult or nymph, emerger, cripple, dun, shuck, spinner. • Weight: unweighted to extremely heavy. • Size: small to large. Often you will use a combination of the above methods. Ask yourself what is logical to you. If…

All three waters are run scrupulously by the Dunfanaghy Angling Association. The season runs from later March or April to the end of September. Boats are available on all three lakes. Bank fishing is possible on parts of Port and all of Sessiagh; New Lake is fished from the boat only. Permits are valid for all three waters and are available from Arnold’s Hotel, Dunfanaghy, Co. Donegal (arnoldshotel.com). Tel: +353 (0)74 913 6208. A daily permit costs 14 euros, half-day 10 euros and weekly 60 euros. Boat hire (boat only): daily 17 euros, half-day 12 euros and weekly 60 euros. Enquiries about outboards may be made via Arnold’s. There’s well-developed infrastructure in Dunfanaghy including hotels, shops, restaurants and pubs, with plenty to see and do for non-angling visitors: dunfanaghy.info…

Fix the plastic tube on the tube mount then run on the tying thread. Apply turns of lead foil at the front, then wind on a tag of oval gold tinsel at the rear. Catch in a length of yellow Glo-Brite floss and apply close turns. Having completed the tag with the yellow floss, catch in a tail of yellow Fluoro Fibre. Catch in a strand of dyed-black ostrich herl and wind on a few touching turns. With the herl butt in place secure the loose end and trim off the waste. Take a length of holographic tinsel or braid and length of oval gold tinsel and catch them in immediately in front of the ostrich. Select a dyed-yellow badger hackle and prepare it by stroking the fibres back from…

Tougher trout, please I read with great interest Stan Headley s article on Pitsford Water in the September issue. In particular, his parting comments in the last paragraph about “olden times when we would go out with floating lines and … wet-flies, pull like good uns and catch fish after fish”. Those days do seem to have passed. As recently as four seasons ago on my local reservoir, I can recall fast-pulling Boobies and large deer-hair Sedges and there were no shortage of rainbow trout ready to follow and take on the surface. It was almost so easy catching them that it felt like cheating. I can also remember large splashy fry-feeders in the margins late in the season. Then, the early season produced a good quantity of over-wintered fish…

As warm as a duck The Nivalis jacket recently won the tackle industry’s EFTTEX Best New Clothing award and is one of the most technically advanced Snowbee has ever made. While there’s nothing quite like natural feather-down for retaining heat, it has a big drawback: if it gets wet it loses all its thermal properties. Many leading manufacturers have got round this by giving their jackets a waterproof shell or giving the down a hydrophobic treatment to make it water resistant. Snowbee has taken a different approach. The jacket is made from a three-layer laminated fabric: a micro-fibre shell with a DWR (durable water repellent) treatment; a waterproof inner membrane; and a peachskin-finish polyester lining for comfort. Sandwiched between these layers is a 90 per cent duck-down and 10 per…

Anglers in Wales could be forgiven for thinking that the Welsh Government is intent on destroying fishing to the west of Offa’s Dyke. A string of madcap consultations, a complete lack of angling promotion by Visit Wales, a laissez-faire approach to widespread agricultural pollution, support for tidal lagoons, a threat to impose compulsory catch-and-release throughout the country, no action to tackle an increase in fish-eating birds and cuts to fisheries budgets make anti-angling conspiracy theories increasingly plausible. “A string of madcap consultations...” Ten years ago, we had the excellent Fishing Wales initiative that involved professional promotion of all forms of angling and yielded an 80 to 1 return on investment for the country. Today, if you go to the Visit Wales website, there is some guff about how marvellous fishing…

TROUT OFF THE MENU? Inland Fisheries Ireland has published new findings which suggest that pike in Ireland have changed their diet. Research in the 1960s and 1970s at loughs Derravaragh and Sheelin indicated that pike preferred to eat brown trout and perch. However, the latest research, at loughs Conn and Derravaragh, reveals that pike appear to have changed their prey preference and now predominately eat roach. Scientists in Scotland and England have found similar changes in pike diet occurring in Loch Lomond (Scotland) and Lake Windermere (England). It is thought the changes in diet are due to the invasion of roach in these waters. The latest research examines whether pike and brown trout can co-exist in the same habitat. Using statistical models, it found that pike and brown trout could…

Fish Legal has won a major victory against Scottish Water in a long legal battle over a pollution incident in the River Devon in 2011. Action was taken against the utility on behalf of Devon Angling Association (DAA) after nearly five miles of DAA water and fish were destroyed in July 2011 when 10,000 litres of sulphuric acid was allowed to escape from Castlehill water treatment works. Despite having pled guilty to a statutory offence relating to the unauthorised release of acid into a watercourse, Scottish Water refused to pay compensation to DAA for the fish kill. Scottish Environment Protection Agency investigators established that the cause of the spill was a poorly tightened bolt that leaked and caused the containment system to fail. But the company argued that their maintenance…

I WAS WALKING DOWN THE STREET the other day when I saw a skip outside a house that was being renovated. In the skip was the usual assortment of builders’ detritus: broken bricks, some plasterboard, several empty cement bags, sundry odds and ends of skirting and coving, quite a lot of very elderly cabling and a length of lead pipe. I paused for a moment and looked. When I lived in south London many, many moons ago there were almost as many skips in our street as there were Golf GTi-s and that is saying something. Almost every single Victorian cast-iron fireplace moved house in those days. Out of one terrace, into a skip, that night out of the skip and into the back of a GTi, round the corner…