White campion

Thursday, 4 May 2023 at 17:15

The wild garden's coming on. Bluebells and forget-me-not are there in profusion. Horseweed (aka Canadian fleabane) also seems to have appeared in legions and I'm not sure I'm all too fond of that despite the uses to which the weed was put over the centuries. (I've rooted up some of it and kept a plant or five, just to show willing.) And one plant that has appeared, much to my delight, is the white campion (see image) - Silene alba. I've been too delinquent to look up whether it has any herbal uses but it's certainly an elegant wild flower. (My reader will recall I did a bit of work last year on the term campion, noting that the noun was possibly related to champion - the flower was probably used in the chaplets or garlands worn by the victors of Roman games.)

A delight

Tuesday, 2 May 2023 at 17:48

It's been a strange angling spring so far and my catches of trout have been sparse, even disappointing. It's true I've released a couple of fairly sizeable trout (sizeable, that is, by my modest standards) but I've seen very little natural fly - just a few large dark olives (LDO) on the Wharfe at the end of March. Today, however, in Ryedale I did see some LDO, though it was 1430 before I saw the first of them. Thereafter the hatch grew into something respectable to which the trout responded. It wasn't a blizzard of insects and it wasn't a great rise of trout, but after the past month's relative inactivity it was a delight to cast a floating fly to rising fish. The olive Funneldun (see image) did its duty well. Some years ago now I worked out which were my most used and effective flies for river trout, stillwater trout, grayling, sea trout and so on. For river trout, the Funneldun was among the most successful dry flies and its totals over the years run well into three figures.

Black gnats and hawthorns

Monday, 1 May 2023 at 08:05

I paused yesterday to watch a small flock of yellowhammers and realised the air was full of flying hooks - hawthorns. Of late I've also seen some small black gnats. 'Black gnat' is a phrase which distinguishes a number of smallish, black, flat-winged insects but whenever these small black jobs get onto the water at this time of year, the trout (often) take them well. The fish are fond of hawthorns, too, if and when the flies haphazardly find themselves on the surface. It pays to carry some representations. I've never found it vital to carry both gnats and hawthorns - a generic size 14-16 black artificial, particularly a parachute dressing that fishes in the film, works adequately to mimic both insects. I'm looking forward to fishing these dry/damp flies because so far this spring the sunk fly has been much more effective than the floater and I've seen little rising on the Yorkshire rivers I've fished.