Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2019 i Trout & Salmon

CONGRATULATIONS TO Richard Breakwell, winner of the 2018 Morison Trophy, awarded to the angler catching the heaviest salmon on fly from the River Deveron. In the picture, Richard’s winning 22lb salmon (38in long, 19in girth) is held by Mark Watson, who helped to land the fish in May on the Muiresk beat near Turriff. The Morison Trophy is named after Clementina Morison, who holds the British record for a fly-caught salmon, landing a 61lb fish from the Deveron in 1924. The trophy was launched in 2011 by the Morison family with the Deveron, Bogie and Isla Rivers Charitable Trust and is made from silver and black limestone. It is perhaps the most valuable game-fishing trophy in Britain.…

Test your dexterity by conquering the Bimini twist. Or more usefully, learn five new knots for fly-fishing. Loop: Perfection rather than Surgeon's. Trout hook knot: Grinner rather than Half-blood. Salmon hook knots: Turle and Rapala. Backing: Albright. Leader: Blood. Visit: anglingknots.com Have a party. A fishing party. Correspond and plan with friends and acquaintances to form a large party this year and hire a grand house together – often much more affordable than hotels. Catch supper. Find a stillwater that’s open and keep your arm tuned during short, cold days. Or put fish back in the grue on the Tay, Thurso... Read an angling classic. Never got round to reading Cotton's chapter at the back of The Compleat Angler? McGuane's The Longest Silence? It's time. Glue your fingers together ……

YOU MAY NOT HAVE NOTICED, but we are, at least judged by the latest sales figures for angling, taking part in a sport that is in a spiral of decline. I’ll spare you all the gory details, but the headline figure is that, since 2010 rod licence sales are down by 40 per cent from close to one and a half million annually to under nine hundred thousand. This year, the decline is 15 per cent. Maybe I’m wrong, but fishing doesn’t feel to me a sport in a nosedive. Certain sectors - carp fishing, high-end destinations and family leisure to name but three - are doing very well. Fishing gets its fair share on social media, and on television we have Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing on BBC, Robson…

1 Proportions A highly subjective topic because tying styles must be taken into account. I'm known for my classic salmon flies, but what follows applies to modern hairwing salmon patterns, too. Naturally, the choice of hook matters, particularly on classic flies, but the most important part of the fly is the tail. It governs not only the fly's proportions but also its shape. On the fly pictured, opposite the hook point is a good place to attach the tail, which should extend to just beyond the bend. The wing should extend to the extremity of the tail. The hackle should be half the length of the shank. A collar hackle (a hackle tied in after the wing) reduces the size of the head significantly because it covers up the wing…

WINTER IS A quiet time in the trout-fisher’s year, but for the rivers it’s a period of flood and change. Beneath their surface, trout are born and insects are battling to survive. It’s these small critters - particularly the duns and spinners - that bring me joy all season. Whether blue-winged olives on cool, drizzly days or sedge in late-season mugginess, there’s always life by the river. It is in winter, while my net hangs on the wall, that I prepare for these hatches and my fly-box is refilled. My greatest influence at the vice is the adult fly. It is only a tiny portion of a trout’s diet, but tying and then fishing a dry-fly is one of the most exciting ways to deceive my quarry. On my bench,…

Tickets: Fishing must be booked in advance on the Forsinard Fly Fishers’ Club website (forsinardflyfishers.co.uk). Membership costs only £30 with £15 concessions for senior citizens. Youngsters go free, though must be accompanied by an adult. Fishing is restricted on some lochs at certain times of the season owing to nesting birds and the shooting season. Further details and availability on the club website. The club has ten lochs with boats on them, which can be hired by members for an additional £10 (members don’t need to pay for a boat if they take a youngster – the club are keen to encourage the next generation). Contact secretary Paul Byrne, tel: 07904 483 085. Chairman Reuben Sweeting, tel: 07920 571 026. E-mail: forsinardflyfishers@gmail.com Tackle: From May, five- and six-weight rods are…

Q I aim to catch as many species of fish on fly as possible next season. Do you know where I might catch a powan? David Little, via e-mail A I would try Carron Valley Reservoir in the Central Belt hills between Denny and Fintry. Powan must have been introduced there around 1990 – I remember the novelty of catching them. They were added as “reserve stock” in case a disaster hit their fragile population in Loch Lomond. They certainly like Carron Valley and are now regarded as a bit of a pest. Not only are they easy to catch when conditions are right, but they don’t fight and are present in such numbers that regular anglers feel they are having a detrimental effect on the wild browns. Carron still…

Whatever happened to the fat back-end rainbows? I read Simon Cooper's article in November with much interest and considerable agreement. As a predominantly stocked-reservoir angler, it has become increasingly apparent to me over the last few seasons that triploid rainbow trout are not what they used to be. Current strains do not appear to survive more than a few months. Fish stocked in March, April and May do not seem to survive in any numbers through the summer. Those that do, fail to feed effectively on autumn fry, while insect life in autumn is insufficient to support weight-gain, so they don't survive the winter. Fish stocked in September and October do not adjust to natural feeding and they, too, fail to survive the winter. This must presents a serious problem…

Untouched sport on the Nairn To the south of the Great Glen and in the heart of Strathnairn is Glen Nairn Lodge at Flichity, a single-storey house overlooking the three-acre Loch Dubh with superb views to the Flichity Hills that form part of the Monadhliath range. Inverness is 12 miles. Built 30 years ago, the house provides two reception rooms, library, study, long gallery, three bedrooms with ensuite bathrooms, fourth bedroom and bathroom. There is also a two-bedroom flat with sitting room and bathroom. Among the outbuildings are quadruple garage, two loose boxes, tack room and hayloft, kennels and stores. Land of 263 acres includes established woodlands, heather hill and extensive grazing. The eastern boundary is formed by the River Nairn and provides 1.4 miles of fishing on the west…

ROD CALBRADE Photographer Rod is not a cold weather grayling fisherman and waits for a settled, slightly warmer period to go after them with Spiders and occasionally a dry-fly. If he’s not chasing grayling, he will be taking pictures for the River Ribble Trust of the Ribble and Hodder, their tributaries and becks. STUART FOXALL Stuart recently fished the Derbyshire Wye and caught a number of grayling over the magical 2lb mark. This month he hopes to fish Welsh rivers and the Test to see if he can get a three-pounder. But the opening day of the salmon season can’t come soon enough and the chance to connect with a chrome unicorn... PAUL LITTLE In the New Year, contributor Paul will be attending a show in New Jersey, dressing classic…

Total annual trip-related expenditure Coarse: £944 million Trout and grayling: £115 milllion Salmon and sea-trout: £7.3 million 27,000 jobs were supported by anglers’ expenditure. Number of licenced anglers: 758,000 coarse anglers. 195,000 brown trout, rainbow trout and grayling anglers. 11,000 salmon and sea-trout anglers. Total annual days spent angling Coarse: 19.7 million (7.4 million of which were carp). Brown trout, rainbow trout and grayling: 2.4 million. Salmon and sea-trout: 134,000. Number of days fished for each game species* 2,990,000: stocked trout 839,000: wild trout 383,000: grayling 109,000: salmon 71,000: sea-trout *Often multiple species are fished for on same day. Days fished by water and species Stillwaters for trout: 1,490,000. Rivers for trout and grayling: 938,000. Rivers for salmon and sea-trout: 133,000. Distance travelled to fish 294: The average annual distance…

THROUGH HIS POPULAR television series Go Fishing, John Wilson became the public face of angling in the UK for almost 20 years. Better known for his coarse- and sea-fishing, he was a consummate all-rounder, often fly-fishing on camera. He fished in more than 60 countries, making 160 TV programmes. His first broadcasts were in the mid-1980s, on ITV and then Channel 4, attracting audiences in the millions. His easy-going on-screen style, always chatting, enthusiastic, with an irrepressible laugh, endeared him to several generations of anglers. The bonhomie was underpinned by skilful angling techniques and a love of wildlife and the countryside. He attracted viewers who had never picked up a rod and helped them to understand the joy of angling. The author of more than 40 books, he was a…

NO. 5 T.C. KINGSMILL MOORE (1893-1979) Theodore Conyngham Kingsmill Moore was an Irish High Court judge, one of the most respected men in Ireland. His one fishing book, first published in 1960, covers a lifetime of fishing in Ireland for trout, sea-trout (white trout), and salmon. In it he introduces his now-famous fly patterns, the olive and claret Bumbles and the Kingsmill, as well as describing his exploits on the western loughs, often with his famous gillie, “Jamesie”. A second edition, published in 1979, added two more chapters; on lost Irish fish, and on Delphi. It is an enchanting book, and essential reading for any angler intending fishing for trout, sea-trout or salmon in Ireland. Broadcaster and angling author Conrad Voss Bark writes in the Introduction that Kingsmill Moore “……

IN ANOTHER LIFE I WAS CONSIDERED an expert on management and employment. I studied the theorists - people like Peter Drucker, Elton Mayo, Frederick Wynslow Taylor, Max Weber and Douglas McGregor. I wrote books about their ideas. For a while, I moved into management and applied the things I’d learned. Some were successful, some less so. In the process, I learned something new about the acquisition and transfer of skills, and this, I’m certain, is universal. It doesn’t matter how much you know as a teacher, or how much you pass on to others, people need to learn for themselves, often from their own mistakes. You would think that a teacher’s knowledge of the mistakes and hazards we are likely to encounter as novices, would equip us to avoid them…

IN PREVIOUS articles, we have seen how, in the Victorian era, the harvesting of salmon moved steadily from what was an almost exclusively commercial venture in which the fish were taken by traps, nets and suchlike works of the devil to becoming more of a sporting endeavour with rod and line. Preferably armed with a fly, though the majority of fishers also used spinner and bait. That is, the spinner in high water, the fly as it fell and cleared, and prawn, shrimp or worm when the water was low and clear. Of course, the choices of the majority didn’t rule out the possibility that the keenest fly-fishers wouldn’t seek to develop fly tackle and tactics that could work even when the water was at its lowest and clearest. John…

Stillwater favourite gets better If you’re the sort of angler who likes to ring the changes and carry lots of lines to find the perfect presentation on the day, then a quality cassette reel is the obvious choice. You can change lines quickly, and store lots of densities, on spare spools, with minimal weight, space and cost. Orvis’s Clearwater IV Cassette reel has always been a bestseller, combining good performance and value for money with great customer service should anything go wrong. Updated for 2019, it still has a light, cast aluminium, large-arbor frame  but it’s been given a few tweaks. The counter weight on the front has been shaped to better match the reel’s angled porting, while the reverse has a more modern skeletal design and improved click drag-knob.…

Including NEWS, WATERS TO FISH AND FLIES TO TIE AND TRY THIS MONTH England and Wales BORDER ESK THE BURNFOOT Beat totalled just under 400 salmon and grilse for the season as well as 90 sea-trout. Out on the Esk and Liddel Angling Club waters Richard Mosedale fished the last week of the season with his son William. Richard caught the largest fish on the club waters estimated at well over 18lb. He landed three salmon for the week while his son William caught one. Late catches on the Willow Pool included Dave Hartley with a 3lb grilse and Bill Rutter with a 14lb 8oz salmon caught spinning. Dave Laidler landed one of 9lb while Colin Hudson caught one of 11lb on a Willie Gunn tube fly. Down on the…

THE FESTIVE TIDE IS ONCE MORE looming and I am doing my level best to be cheerful. It hasn’t been the best of years for a number of reasons - some of which I have shared with you over the last several months - and I shall not be sorry to see the back of it. So being cheerful as we look out upon the broad, sunlit uplands of 2019 won’t be an issue. At least, it won’t be an issue as long as we avoid looking at the headlines in the newspapers, disregard any and all news services, switch off the wireless and the television and withdraw from any form of what we must now laughingly refer to as “social” media. This is scarcely a problem for me since…

THERE’S what is almost a tradition of angling works written by (or about) river keepers. Perhaps the most notable were written by (or about) Frank Sawyer, but within recent memory the genre includes a text about Alfred Lunn (A Particular Lunn) and another written by Bernard Aldrich (The Ever Rolling Stream). Ron Holloway, who for over 30 years worked as a keeper on the Itchen at Martyr Worthy before retiring to the Tweed at St. Boswell’s (from where he kept a watchful eye on visiting salmon anglers), has provided an insightful, often funny contribution to this genre. This is the successor to Ron’s first book, You Should Have Been Here Last Thursday (George Mann); Ron was working on these present reflections when he died in 2016. There are touching vignettes.…

Large dark olive As a new year dawns, you’d be forgiven for thinking that most mayfly species would be far from hatching, and for the most part you’d be right, however, the Large dark olive (Baetis rhodani) is the exception to the rule. Almost all rivers will experience a hatch of Large dark olives. Their nymphs are a near-ubiquitous component of riverfly fauna throughout the British Isles. They have streamlined cylindrical bodies and are accomplished swimmers. Any investigation of a river usually reveals them darting to and fro at great speed. Their three tails are fringed with hairs, which help them to swim in short, sharp bursts. There are typically two generations a year, but in the right conditions there may be more. This flexible life cycle means that Large…

Skaill I have a penchant for big lochs, but - deep inside - I also love small rich waters where the trout grow big and fast. The first one I experienced was Skaill in Orkney. Orkney contains a number of lochs similar to Skaill - shallow, extremely fertile with a sparse trout population. They are normally found near the sea and have meagre spawning facilities, allowing a greater food quota for each maturing fish. Obviously, this leads to very fast growth. From a fly-fisherman’s perspective this is the ultimate trout environment. Young, big trout roaming shallow water, still susceptible to standard wet-flies, and they ain’t too fussy. The downside, and there always will be one, is that weed growth is intense in late summer, and not only does this make…

1 Fix the hook in the vice and apply a few turns of tying thread along the shank. Select a well-marked Coq de Leon hackle. 2 Tear off three fibres from the Coq de Leon hackle, ensuring the tips are kept level. Catch in the fibres with thread turns. 3 Wind the thread down to the bend, securing the hackle fibres to the shank. Take a brown-olive turkey biot and split it down the middle. 4 Take one half of the turkey biot and catch it in by its tip at the base of the tail. Secure it with further thread turns then wind the thread back up towards the eye and trim off the waste ends of the hackle fibres. 5 Take hold of the turkey biot by its…

WE’VE ALL SEEN performance cars sitting on the cheapest tyres obtainable. The same happens in fly-fishing: ask any tackle-shop owner and they’ll tell you of customers who spend four-figure sums on tackle and then recoil in horror at the thought of paying more than 25p for a fly. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but if it’s called fly-fishing then I guess the fly must be pretty important. If so, why are fly-fishers sometimes unwilling to pay a fair price for a handmade item? If you buy flies, here is some food for thought. Top-quality hooks cost 22p each, add a tungsten bead at 13p and we are up to 35p without adding any thread, materials or, most importantly, labour. So, when I see a beadhead nymph on sale at 39p,…

WELSH SALMON FISHING ON THE BRINK? An inquiry into Natural Resources Wales’ plan to introduce a byelaw banning the killing of salmon throughout Wales will be held at the Elephant & Castle Hotel, Newtown, Powys on Tuesday, January 15. It was ordered by Welsh Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs Lesley Griffiths in response to widespread objections to the byelaw from anglers. Led by the independent Planning Inspectorate and lasting about three weeks, the inquiry is open to the public and will start at 10am each day. NRW is likely to put its case for approximately six days with the remaining time given to angling organisations, clubs and individuals who made submissions during an earlier public consultation. The planning inspector’s report is expected to be submitted to Ministers within three months,…