[Mike Barrio]

Excellent Irvine ...... Well done

A few of the guys at the Gathering last weekend had some nice fish on the upper river.

Cheers
Mike

[Jim Eddie]

Nice fish Irvine  

 

Jim

[Iain Cameron]

At least my season has started.

Great pic - fantastic spots on the dorsal fin. Nice fash!
iain

[Sandy Nelson]

At least my season has started.

Nice way to do it too .....

Sandy

[Noel Kelly]

Been out for a few hrs fri, sat and today Sunday with very little to show. Fri & sat seen a few olives and a fewer march browns. Sat seen the first yellow mays of the year, only one or two. Saw 2 olives today...
Rising fish have been few and far between, only seen about 4 over the 3 outings. Nothing big.
Fished 3 different beats and speaking to a lot of fisher folk, seems no one I spoke to is getting much just now. Hopefully things will pick up again in the coming week.
Noel 

[Rob Brownfield]

Well, I finally managed 2 fish after a very hard days fishing. Each one took a size 18 tungstan headed PT nymph fished "klink and dink" and both fish were between 4 or 5............. inches! 

Hard fishing in poor conditions with some good anglers out fishing with nowt to show.

[Jonathan Kerr]

It sure was pretty hard going on saturday. A lovely bright day where I was (between hail showers!) but a bit breezy in the open. I had quite a few smaller fish but again failed to see/hook into anything decent.  The day got better around 6 pm typically just before we had to go. The temperature was still good then, a little warmer than earlier in the day, the wind died and my fishing partner managed to pull one out of around a 1lb shortly after.  cracking little trout it was. Not a bad day by any means but hoped to see a few more fish.

[Iain Goolager]

Well Done Irvine   nice Trout.

Got home for a few hours on Saturday and went fishing.   Weather was really nice and it was one of those days that we've been waiting weeks for.

The river looked good and for some strange reason I had a penchant for fishing the 10' 3wt streamflux    I think this fishes well with a 2wt GT140 (or is it 120?) and onto this I fished a 22' tapered leader with a 6' tippet c/w Waterhen Bloa and PTN.
 I must admit it fished really well in the windless afternoon and although it was going to be a LTH set up I ended up fishing large sections of un-wadable water using ten or so feet of fly line out of the tip.
I didn't mange anything larger than 7" but it was pleasing to be out.

I saw 2 fish rise when I was working the pool both around the 1 - 1 1/2lb mark. One was off the other bank over 2 tongues of current so I kept an eye on him but never cast to him. The other one was also not within striking distance and as I was wading I kept on with my routine.

When the 'drift' was finished I sat a while to take in the day and the flies that were showing. It wasn't long before a fish showed once, then twice at the edge of a seam very close to the bank just a few yards from me.

I looked overhead at the overhanging branches and then at this stupidly long leader  . I nipped off the two 'wets' and tied on an adaptor fly a dry.  During this retrofit I told myself that I should be removing the LTH leader and fitting a standard dry fly leader, but I wouldn't listen.
First cast I hooked a tree, second cast I overcompensated for the lack of back cast and puddled the leader at my feet. Then I had a few casts playing 'guess where the dry will land?'

I resigned myself to the fact that I had to wise up on the leader front. Hoping that I hadn't put the fish down & he would keep on showing I went through the agonising process of taking my tapered leader out of the pack, unravelling it, tying on one further section of taper then the tippet. Even straightening the leader, tying on and treating the fly, not forgetting to remove the shine with a bit of grass, seemed to take an age but he did show and two drifts over him was enough to snare him. He wasn't a huge fish but gave a really nice account of himself on the Streamfleck.

At 1 1/2lb it was well worth the tension and made me curse for even thinking about anything but the dry.

I though a tasty shot of him semi submerged being released would be in order so I removed the hook and lay him in the net in a shallow weedy hollow

while I took a test shot...........ready. Then I held him in my hand and he b*****ed off!  

Quite a few of these on the go.....






Iain

[Jim Eddie]

Nice Photo's Iain   

 

Jim

[Sandy Nelson]

Nice Pictures.

What sort of time did they hatch? I saw Olive uprights on the Ythan today as well, between 2 and 4pm.
First Uprights i've seen this year.

Sandy

[Iain Goolager]

I've still to see, or be aware that I've seen OU's, looking forward to seeing those big boys though.

This fella was taken around 2pm.

Disappointed with the photo's from a I.D standpoint but I take what I can get sometimes.

Iain

[Richard Tong]

Iain

Large Brook Dun-Ecdyonorus torrentis. It's finally kicked off down here after the worst Spring that I can remember. Hatches have gone mad on Wharfe and other Yorkshire rivers. Haven't really had opportunity to fish Don last 2 seasons and not for want of trying. Had a quick visit last year and turned tail and fled and same year before on two occasions. We both miss the Don and talk about getting on it all the time. Weather looks more settled in next week or so and water levels look great so who knows.  Promotion at work tomorrow means that I will not have the flexibility to take days off like before which is going to hurt when conditions are good but you cannot have everything I suppose.

By the way, Paul was speaking to someone who said Don is mobbed/getting very popular. Do you guys agree or is this a bit of an exaggeration. Annan and Clyde are like Picadilly Circus so we are on look out for lesser known rivers with good potential....

Richard

[Iain Goolager]

Large Brook Dun-Ecdyonorus torrentis

 Richard

I had it whittled down to two possibilities and with there being no picture of a sub-imago (either Male or Female) of the Venosus in my reference book, although there is a reference to a reddish? underbody which this one didn't have, but then again the book states that the underbody of the torrentis is purple.

Also, I could not tell if the eyes were close together from my photographs so I went down the 'either or' route and on a blown up photo it appears that the front foot has five segments with the one closest to the body being shorter than the next.....which leads down the Yellow May road which 'aint right.

I like my reference book but the one improvement I'd like to see is a picture of M&F Sub-imagos' and spinners for each species.

I googled False MB then checked out 'images' and that's where I took my Venosus decision.......obvious problem is every Thomas, DICK & Harold are posting incorrectly labelled insects on t'internet  ( me too) but it gets people debating so it can only be good.


As for the Don getting mobbed, I personally haven't encountered many Trout guys so far this season especially for the quality fish reported caught and lost. In fact most of the traffic that I have encountered are muppets from this site  possibly others out more often would like to comment.
 
Iain

[Noel Kelly]

Last W end was busier than I've seen before on the ADAA beats. With the huge increase in membership in recent years that's not surprising. Friday I fished parkhill and seen 7 other anglers, Saturday there were 5 cars parked at Kintore bridge and Sunday there were 4 others fishing the beat I was on and 2 fishing the opposite bank. That was exceptional though, there have been days I have been out and seen nobody.

[Sandy Nelson]

Iain

Just checked my books too, no decent pics of a venosus
But the pictures I have of the torrentis are spot on
Another big stoneclinger nymph as well.
Good spot too as it looks very similar to the MB at a glance.
Nice to get different images and stimulate some learning.
Thanks Richard for pointing in the right direction
Congrats on the promotion pity it interferes with the fishing, but that's only for a couple of months in the year,
Hope you get up soon

Sandy

[Peter McCallum]

Paul was speaking to someone who said Don is mobbed/getting very popular. Do you guys agree or is this a bit of an exaggeration.

Mmmmmm sounds like a ploy to keep good anglers away 

[Noel Kelly]

Love the flee pics it's an excellent learning tool so thanks Iain, Sandy and Richard. I have pics of one of those chaps as well from Saturday, thought at first it was a march brown but suspected that wasn't right. Can't upload pics at the moment laptop is misbehaving.

[Iain Goolager]

But the pictures I have of the torrentis are spot on

Problem for me is also that Boy flies and girl flies can have different colour attributes and dare I say that water quality, feed and the like may give the same gender & species of fly a different, however subtle, hue depending on location.  

I still can't get my head around the underbody of purple? There just doesn't seem to be enough reference material for someone like me who want's a 100% positive identification.

I happened across a blog today which really got me thinking, how good would this be?

http://www.wexphotographic.com/blog/field-studio-photography-part-1?CM_MMC=ExactTarget-_-Marketing-_-LM_1189916-_-read-more-banner

[Sandy Nelson]

I still can't get my head around the underbody of purple?

Interesting, your top picture has a Purple underbody, could be down to different eyes too as i thought it was quite distinctive once i started looking carefully at the picture. Cracking photos though

Sandy

[Iain Goolager]

And now we hit the problem of accurate colour recognition with differing display screens (possibly), also one might be forgiven for thinking that someone describing purple was actually referring to a yellowy purple hue? when someone else (me) would have a picture in my minds eye of an underbody as if coloured in with a childs felt tipped pen type Purple?

Lord above how are we meant to learn Latin when it's a struggle to define a basic colour 

mi heed!

What's the latin for earthworm? much simpler 
 
Iain

[Iain Goolager]

The one thing that struck me and made me photograph it was the contrast between underbody and mottled wings. It was a very sunny day and the underbody looked quite 'creamy yellow'.

Iain

[Richard Tong]

Apparently from those who know these things(not me!), colour is the least reliable thing to look for, followed by size. However as a generalisation from what I have found, the LBD is larger than MB from same stretch of river/leading edge of wing is distinctly yellow/forewings have two quite distinct clear bands with the largest almost full wing width(as opposed to a small clear central area for MB/ body segments have triangular marking on side edge(rather than almost solid brown for MB)/ tend to hatch a few at a time rather than en masse like MB's/tend to hatch later in season than MB's.

John Goddards Trout Fly Recognition (out of print but can pick up 2nd hand) is brilliant as is the still available FSC Guide 'A Pictorial Guide to British Ephemeroptera.'..by Craig Macadam and Cyril Bennett

Richard

[Sandy Nelson]

Had a great afternoon today on the middle river with Rich and Mike, while they went away to play wheres Wally with the tourists i decide to see if there is still an afternoon hatch .

So from about 1.30pm through till 5pm  there was a steady hatch of both LDO's and Olive Uprights, never in huge quantities but enough to get the fish interested
Following some of the advice from some of the guys on the forum i have tied up a few DHE's , so as an experiment i tied on a size 12 one and kept it on all afternoon, and it survived I'm very impressed with it's floatability and visibility and the Trout take it very confidently, in fact i'm pleased i carry forceps as i had to use them a few times to reach the fly

So i had a good few of these



a few of these around the 10-11" mark



a couple or so of these about 1lb-11/2lb and 12-14"



And to cap it off, one of these, 2lb 4oz on the weigh net and about 18" long



The big one i spooked when i got his wingman earlier in the afternoon, but was back on station after i gave them about 45min break.
All in all a great afternoon fishing on the river and i have lots of faith in the DHE now

Now i know they say you find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, or perhaps maybe even a leprechaun,  but THIS is not what i expected to find  



Good fishing, good company, these are the days it makes it worthwhile being out in all sorts of weather

Sandy

[Jonathan Kerr]

Cracking photos, and fish! Well done. Looks like you made the right choice regarding prey!

[Noel Kelly]

Excellent sandy  looks like a great afternoon, man i so need an afternoon like that to renew my faith. Is that not a leprechaun?