Wild light in May

Thursday, 11 May 2023 at 08:20

Cool and showery

Thursday, 11 May 2023 at 07:57

The weather might have been cool and showery, with the river running full (though dropping), but what has been for me a torrid and difficult start to the season continued yesterday. A small wild trout came to hand early on (Copperhead Caddis) and later in the afternoon I released another at long range (as we say, to make ourselves feel better). In between those small events, and despite a hatch of what I'm sure were Large Brook Duns (see image) between 1230-1400, nothing much happened. There was little rising. Laughing showers hurled themselves at us from Malham Moor; purple-headed clouds boiled above Great Whernside and Buckden Pike. And the river ran on, tinged with peat, implacable.

Sporadic

Friday, 5 May 2023 at 19:55

It was a slow morning on the edge of the North York Moors. The Klink was cast, the Dink pitched in after it. One trout succumbed to a gold-headed caddis pattern. Rain fell - until at lunchtime, suddenly it didn't. The front left behind humidity and gleams of sunshine. In one glide I stumbled across a group of trout feeding well to the smörgåsbord of insects that were by then driting down, onto or across the river: March browns (and some great red spinners), large dark and medium olives, and some small sedges (grannom). There were hawthorns aloft, too. The activity was sporadic and short-lived, but a dry March Brown or Funneldun deceived some lovely wild trout, of which the clonker pictured was the best (about 1¼lb., I reckoned). It was a good fish for that part of the river.

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.