Think Like A Trout In he autumn terms of 1994 and 1996, I was invited to run short fishing courses at our Further Education Centre at Ullswater School, Penrith and at Trinity School, Carlisle, respectively. They were designed to introduce beginners to fly fishing for trout, and to encourage those who already had some knowledge of the sport to learn more about the trout and its habitat in order to make the best use of their acquired skills. In such a short space of time, even with my capacity for discourse, it was not possible to explore all that was relevant to the subject, so, the lessons were aimed at helping students to assimilate the basics and to stimulate them into ‘thinking like a trout’. Some might regard that as an insult, as we are lead to believe that animals are incapable of thinking, but the class knew what I was trying to say. At the outset, I said that anglers learn their craft in a number of ways. The fortunate have an angling father, uncle ( lady anglers will have to forgive my choice of gender ) or family friend sufficiently skilled to pass on the right information, and to demonstrate, correctly, the art of casting a fly, controlling its drift, timing the strike and playing and netting the quarry etc. The extremely fortunate may have a guide or tutor who is also a naturalist. If so, then the attentive beginner should soon learn sufficient about the trout and its environment to enable him to make a fair fist of tackling any angling situation in which he may find himself. Some anglers learn from experience, by their own efforts in the main, and as a result of continued study of the trout and the sport which has built up around it. Sadly, as I demonstrated at the first class, that sort of knowledge, self-taught skill and river-craft, is often amassed along with a crop of grey hair! There are quicker, more direct routes to the goal of knowledge, and I suppose the best is found by coupling enthusiastic study ( I emphasise enthusiastic study ) with practical help from an angler of proven, all-round ability — I avoid use of the word, expert. I have to say that with some experts, like some teachers, sometimes the best may appear to be only one or two chapters or so, in the book of learning, ahead of the class. That is not too bad a state, however, as it can help establish empathy and mutual respect between tutor and pupil. Each may more readily recognise and respect the other’s requirements. In order to think like a trout, the angler needs to know what makes a trout tick, and to do that, he must know something about the food cycle of the trout. The angler who knows what a trout may eat can then confidently present the fly or lure of his choice, knowing that it was selected to match a food item normally on the menu for the particular stream, pool or lake under attack at a given time. If the angler also knows the other requirements of the trout — adequate aeration of the water, shelter from strong currents, shelter from predators , etc — and the habits of the various food forms in and over the water, including their development and movement season by season, then he will be able to deduce where the fish are likely to be, and why. Then, the angler can claim to be able to think like a trout! Unfortunately, some anglers devote little or no time to study of the trout or the sport of fly-fishing. They may often catch fish despite their lack of knowledge, getting by on experience alone. Some also manage to catch trout in spite of their shortage of casting skill. During the close season, I hope to provide a succession of articles which will help both the beginner and the less knowledgeable of the more experienced anglers among our readers. Nobody knows it all, and one of the greatest attractions of our sport is that anglers who have an open, receptive mind
never stop learning about it. Writing about river-craft is, for me, truly, a lesson in learning it all over again.
A Simplified Food Cycle Of Trout Although the stomach contents of a trout may occasionally include some vegetable matter, under normal wild conditions, trout are carnivorous and, to a great degree, they are insectivorous. The reader may well claim that brown trout can be caught using cheese or bread, for example. I have even seen them take, and eject, a cigarette butt and a piece of chewing gum, both of which were thrown into a beck, from a bridge, by a friend; and, many years ago, I fed five small sycamore buds in quick succession to a brown trout in the River Raven at Kirkoswald. All five were taken, and then ejected by the fish, but a sixth was ignored. This digression should indicate that bank side trout can be suckers for offerings that fall upon the water. Both bank side trout and chub may be seen to take such a gift without pausing even momentarily to examine it. Diversity Of Food A very wide range of aquatic insect larvae, insect pupae and adult aquatic insects are to be found in and on the water, and a great many are favoured by the trout. Additionally, trout will readily accept many of the great variety of terrestrial insects and spiders which are blown, or which fall, upon the water. Freshwater shrimps, snails, leeches, hoglice and small fish all figure in the trout’s menu, and trout have been known to eat tadpoles, frogs and mice. Exceptionally, I suppose, a large trout was once seen chomping on an unfortunate squirrel which, apparently, had fallen into a North American river under observation by the late Ed. Hewitt, a highly respected American angling writer. Downsizing food forms, now, I have to say that, tiny though they may be, daphnia ( water ‘fleas’ ) also form an important link in the food chain. THe Food Cycle Starting with algae, a very simple plant form at the bottom of the food chain, we have the means of turning dissolved nutrients into a basic food supply. The lower order of animal life forms in the water, zooplankton, graze upon algae and are preyed upon, in turn, by small fish, some insect larvae, shrimps and beetles etc. Snails and daphnia, already mentioned, also feed upon algae, so we can see right away the great importance of the algae link in the food chain for the trout. The various nutrients which enrich the water are introduced in several ways. Some are leached in from the surrounding land, some are water bourne quite considerable distances, having been made available by erosion or chemical action, while a portion of them is produced by bacteria breaking down the waste products ( excreta ) of the trout. Now, the cycle has been completed, and the algae start it off all over again. Many of the invertebrate food forms feed upon plant material, either the growing plants or the waste on offer when they die and break down; but I have presented a simple food chain to show how the cycle works. Unfortunately, algae can be too plentiful at times, due to over-enrichment of the water ( eutrophication ) which is usually caused by over-enthusiastic use of chemical or organice fertilisers on the land or by the the influx of inadequately treated sewage effluents; and even the droppings of large flocks of water fowl can have a considerable effect upon the algal blooms. The Main Controller The main controller of the trout’s environment is man. Man is the creature who has the greatest power to affect the trout’s habitat and the food chain, partly because he removes the trout by being
able to exploit his knowledge of the food chain. The fly fishing angler is primarily concerned with making a life-like copy of a small, natural creature appeal to a trout. So, he needs to know how to copy the higher orders of the animal life in the food chain of the trout in the river or lake. To do this, he must either study these life forms and make his own copies, or rely upon the tackle dealer or a fly-tying friend to supply him with the correct patterns, in their correct seasons. Having set up his tackle, with the right flies selected, the angler must know when and where he will find his trout at various times of the day and the season, and under varying conditions. He must approach his fish stealthily, present his flies delicately and accurately, and fish them so that they move as the naturals which they copy would move. When he induces the trout to bite, he has achieved his main aim in fishing the fly! Hooking and landing it may be regarded as a bonus.
The Basic Needs Of Trout The river trout has four basic needs which determine where it is likely to be at a given time. Understanding, and appreciatiing, the importance of these needs is the basis for learning river craft, as least so far as locating the trout is concerned. We have already discussed the food cycle of the trout, and we have briefly considered the important life forms upon which it depends, because, to us, food is probably the most obvious requirement, although it is not really the most important. Being warm-blooded, human beings eat in order to produce body warmth — unlike the cold-blooded trout, the body temperature of which follows that of the water in which it lives; but, like the trout, we also to eat in order to live, to grow and to keep the body in working order. The really important requirement for both the angler and the trout is not food. It is what some angling instructors term, ‘the comfort factor’. A shortage of air, or suffering excessively high or low temperatures, for example, would kill us off much more quickly than a shortage of food. In Arctic seas, the man overboard may survive for only a few precious minutes. In clean, well-aerated water, a goldfish can go for a fortnight without food. Our trout will be at its happiest, then, in a flow of water of cool, even temperature, free from pollution and containing a good supply of dissolved air. With the foregoing needs supplied, the food will be found if the river is fertile, containing a healthy balance of essential, natural nutrients Shelter From Currents And Predators The third basic need is that of shelter from the current, because we are dealing here with river trout. At certain, specific times, trout will be found in fast water, butting the stream while feeding in the fast shallows, or seeking the aeration provided by rapids, for example. For much of the time, however, the trout will be conserving its energy by sheltering in the lee of some obstruction to the flow, in the bow-wave area upstream of a boulder, or by lying in the gentler flow down the cheek of a stream. It may also elect to lie in a slow-moving, deep, cool pool, moving out only to feed or when pursued by a predator. The fourth basic need is that of shelter from predators, among which I list the angler. Shelter for the trout exists in many forms. Occasionally, it may simply be the turbulence of broken water which screens the trout by making it difficult for the otter, the osprey, the cormorant or the angler to see it. Even a fish as large as a salmon can disappear into a mere foot or so of broken water, when it seeks out a cool, aerated lie in the head stream of a pool in hot weather.
Fertile Rivers In the more fertile rivers, weed beds form inviting pockets and channels, while riverside grasses, bushes and trees also screen fish from both the sun and the prying eyes of predators. On the moorland becks and burns, the shelter could well be an undercut peat bank, replaced in the lowland valley by a clay bank. In typical, northern rivers and streams, rocks, boulders and ledges all provide protective cover, while a little less permanent shelter may be afforded by the branches and trunks of trees, or other forms of flotsam and jetsam, which have fallen in the water. Many seasons ago, I spent several minutes on a sunny May day studying an Eamont brown trout, of about a pound in weight, which was repeatedly burrowing and ‘ferreting’ under a large piece of waterlogged, heavy-duty plywood board. On examination, the underside of the board proved to be richly invested with insect larvae. The board would no doubt disappear with the next big autumn flood, but until it did, it was both shelter and larder for at least one enterprising trout.
The Anatomy Of A River Knowing the basic needs of a trout — food, aerated water, shelter and protection, as already described — helps us understand the habits and movements of the fish. In addition to this, however, we need to know the composition of a river, and how to relate the needs of a trout to the various natural features, as we see and recognise them, in order to ‘read the water’. Having the ability to read the water is what separates the angler who thinks he knows where the fish might be from the angler who knows where they should be, at any time and under all conditions. Four Basic Features Rivers may be broken down into four basic components, or features — the ‘riffle’, which is a favourite term of American angling writers and producers of angling videos, and which the Scottish or the northern English angler would term a ‘stickle’: the run, the pool and the flat. These four terms feature regularly in American angling works, and it appears that more attention is given to this sort of detail in their productions than we see, or used to see, in some of our home-bred reading and viewing media. All four basic features mentioned may be easily seen in the River Eden, and studied all in one go, by those anglers who live in or near Lazonby village. There is an extensive flat, above the swimming pool, which becomes a riffle as it picks up speed and turbulence on the slope down to the deeper water in the pool by the car park, upstream of the bridge. The pool is emptied by a run, flanked by a second riffle, which then passes under the bridge, from which these pictures were taken, before it spreads out in a salmon pool which shallows as it in turn becomes a very long flat. The Lazonby Car Park Pool
The Riffle Flanking The Run
The Salmon Pool, Which Becomes A Flat
Typical Riffles Riffles are those stretches of broken water running, ideally, somewhere between about six inches to two feet in depth, interspersed between the other feaures of the river, in various combinations. A typical riffle may be seen from the old sandstone bridge at Brougham. This riffle carries a fast and turbulent flow down the slope from the confluence of the Eamont and the Lowther, below the old weir, losing pace as it approaches the bridge. Another, not so easily seen, occurs at Water’s Meet, where the Eamont runs down fast shallows to swell the River Eden; and there is a classic example on the latter above the mouth of the Crowdundle Beck. The images below show the river-wide riffle that connects the long flat above to the run down the far bank, which holds two salmon lies, twenty yards below the mouth of Crowdundle Beck, and it should be evident from these that riffles are, generally, the shallowest of the river’s features.
On our larger rivers, riffles can be very extensive. One at Eden Brows, linking the boathouse flat with the Island Pool, measured all of eighty metres in length by forty metres in width, and it was relatively shallow, at normal flows, from bank to bank. Riffles exist on our little becks, also, where they may measure only a few metres in length, but they have common features, irrespective of their size. Wherever riffles occur, one thing they must have in common is a fair number of stones or boulders the tops of which protrude from the water, in order to provide a landing-strip for the female spinners of several of our most important up-winged flies. The female Large Dark Olives and the little Pale Watery ladies, for example, alight on these stones and crawl down them in order to lay their eggs on the lee side of the submerged portion. Riffles are generally the most productive areas in our rivers. The shallow, fast-moving water is well aerated, and it permits great light penetration. Thus, particularly in fertile rivers, riffles tend to produce the the greatest amount and greatest variety of plant growth. Since most of the invertebrates are dependent upon growing plants, weeds, the decaying remains of dead plants or upon algae for their food, riffles hold the greatest diversity of animla life. In short, they are the larders of the river, and they have the potential to produce the greatest amount of sport, but such sport may be possible only at specific times, depending upon the features within them. Where weed growth is less luxurious, where there are not many sheltering boulders or gulleys in the gravel, or sheltering growth on the banks, riffles may appear to hold a good head of trout only when
there is an emergence of adult insects, or while larvae and other invertebrates are moving freely in search of grazing. When weed growth is heavy, where boulders, ledges and gullies in the gravel are present, then trout may be found almost permanently in those areas in such riffles which provide comfort and shelter as well as the ever-present food. Then, we may say that such riffles holds ‘prime lies’ as opposed to ‘feeding lies’ — both favourite American angling terms. A prime lie, which satisfies all the needs of the trout, is also referred to in English terms as a ‘hot spot’. Now we are talking river-craft
On our smaller streams, pools generally appear to be connected by riffles, more often referred to as ‘stickles’ in this part of the world. We do find flats on fellside becks, but the gradient of many of our Cumbrian streams results in riffles and pools being the main features. Even on our larger rivers, the tail of one pool might well be joined by a riffle to the head of the next one in succession, but a riffle generally develops into a run on our major rivers, where the deepening flow is often concentrated down one bank as it courses through the head of the pool below. So, we look for classic runs in the bigger rivers of the lower valleys. Runs, generally about two to six feet or so in depth, are those features which draw the salmon fisher like a needle to a magnet. They are very attractive to salmon, because they offer so much in the way of comfort, protection and shelter — food is no longer the important factor that it was when they were last in fresh water — and they are so attractive to the angler because the turbulence and the depth of the water, which obscures the lies, makes them so interesting to fish. However, they are obviously harder to read than riffles, which is an excellent reason for seeking advice from a regular fisher on a beat which is unknown to oneself. The local angler and the ghillie will know from experience much of what the deeper water of a run conceals. Bigger Boulders
For the trout, runs offer so much more than riffles so far as shelter and protection are concerned. Their deeper, fast, broken water has less weed and bigger boulders, but they offer more in the way of permanent and resting lies for trout. Runs hold less insect life, both in variety of species and in numbers within a species, but some other food forms may be found in greater quantity. There are certainly far fewer larvae of the up-winged species, the nymphs of Large Dark Olive, Medium Olive, Iron Blue Dun, and the like, but the concentrations of caddis, stone flies, shrimps and small fish, in the shallower marginal water of runs, can offer excellent feeding opportunities. For the majority of trout anglers, then, the flanks of runs are the areas upon which most of their time, energy and study will be spent. It was not until quite recently, due to the availability of improved fly lines and leader materials, the introduction of new fly tying materials and tying methods, and the emergence of new fishing techniques that these developments permitted, that fly fishers were able to exploit the hidden depths of runs while in pursuit of trout. Less Turbulent Margins As water levels fluctuate during the season, some of the holding lies for trout in riffles — the prime lies or hot spots — may be vacated in low water. They may also be vacated in flood conditions, during which trout may seek the sanctuary offered by pools or the less turbulent margins of the runs. The holding lies in runs are much more permanent in this respect, so we may look upon them as being more important as dormitory areas, although they do offer excellent opportunities for sport when fished correctly. I would say, figuratively speaking, that the riffle is the Melton Mowbray pie factory and the Morrison’s or Tesco retail outlet of the trout’s world, while the run is its Carlton and its Waldorf Astoria — board and lodging! Although turbulent, runs are not usually as turbulent as riffles. They carry a lot more weight in a given area of water, but riffles are busier, if I may use that description. I suppose one could describe them, and their differences, more poetically by suggesting that riffles hop, skip and jump, while runs roll and heave and swell. Riffles are more full of life, while runs are full of power. Put more prosaically, runs have fewer waves, but they are bigger waves.
The Mysterious Pools Of the four terms used by American angling writers to describe the main features of rivers, pools and flats are the two with which British anglers are probably most familiar. ( I will take the opportunity, here, to apologise for the ommision of our Irish brothers of the angle from the original text. ) In the previous article in this thread, I suggested that runs are more full of mystery than riffles; now I will go further and suggest that pools are the most mysterious of all the rivers’ features, particularly the deeper, darker and more heavily-shaded pools of the larger rivers. Even our fell becks have their pools and runs, scaled down versions of some of those already described and portrayed. In my own fishing of these little becks, over forty years ago, most of the challenging dry fly work was focused upon pools, some of which were no bigger than a weed pocket in a riffle on the Eamont or the Eden. I can say for certain, however, that the commonest link between pools on the larger and smaller waters was the fact that they almost invariably held the bigger trout.
On the Eden, I know of four pools which are at least 16ft in depth, three of them I have measured with float tackle and one, the Cottage Pool at Eden Brows, registered that depth on a test run in 1997 of my, then, new fish-finder. One pool on the lower Eamont had a depth of 18ft when plumbed while chub fishing about thirty years ago, and all four mentioned could have deeper troughs or gulleys, undetected during my fishing. Only occasionally, during spells of very low, clear water, coupled with periods of bright sunshine, do we see the massive boulders, ledges and ridges which the most interesting of Eden’s very large pools contain. Depth And Flow Fortunately, the majority of the pools on the Eden and the Eamont, our largest local rivers, have a depth and flow which permit fly fishing on parts of them, at least. At Eden Brows, as a break from salmon fishing in the ‘dog days’ of high summer, my old mentor and I would fish the Cottage Pool from the boat, at anchor. There is something a trifle eerie about fishing for river trout in so large an expanse of water, with such depth, and being able to approach a small pod of trout picking tit-bits from the surface amid a large raft of foam. Having one come up through the raft and engulf the dry fly was an exciting experience; but I digress in this addition to the original text, so, back to business. Some pools, particularly those confined by rocky banks, have quite strong flows; but for the purpose of this discourse, our pools will have relatively little flow in the main body, which will be deeper than the run which enters it. Such pools have less aeration than riffles and runs, little or no weed, except in the shallows of the margins or the tails, and they will probably have silt deposits in the slackest water. The foregoing suggests that they will contain the least supplies of the larvae of up-winged flies, stoneflies and caddis; but because of the silt which many contain, they may well hold greater concentrations of midge larvae and pupae than we would find in riffles and runs. We might also find that the beneficial ranunculus of the shallower features is replaced by Canadian pondweed. The latter is not so popular with anglers, and the fallen leaves of autumn, which often form large drifts in the eddies, are undesirable because the process of their decaying removes oxygen from the water. Besides the feeding upon midge pupae during a hatch, there will be opportunities for any resident trout to feed when up-winged duns float down the pool prior to take-off; when spent spinners litter the water’s surface; during a hatch or a fall of caddis flies or during a fall of terrestrial insects, for example. But, just as we may regard riffles as being, mainly, the restaurants of the trout, we may look upon pools as being, mainly, their dormitories. It has been said that more than 80per cent of the food intake of river trout is obtained sub-surface. That suggests that the ascending nymphs, the emergers and the fully emerged duns of an up-wing hatch, for example, will have had a thorough pasting in the riffles and the cheeks of runs before any escapees reach the slacker water of the pools. Minnows, leeches, crayfish etc, and the fry of coarse fish species, where present, must offer greater opportunities for bulk feeding for the larger residents of pools, generally, unless they roam and forage — and the observant angler may affirm that he has seen such activity. ( I digress here to illustrate a point. Many years ago, I saw, quite by chance, a large brown trout swimming up the shallow margin of a heavily screened flat on our club’s Winderwath Estate water on the Eden. It was heading for the riffle upstream. I didn’t know that at the time, but I saw the same
fish, a week later, lying off a willow bush at the head of the deeper water into which the flat merged, and assumed it was a wanderer. Covering the fish from below was not practicable in the trouser waders that I had at the time; but I made a point of pausing occasionally to peer through the bushes while making my way down the wood that flanked the left bank of the river, on subsequent visits, and saw the fish at several points along his route, over several weeks. I never fished deliberately for that fish, but I hooked it on the dry fly one day in a good feeding lie just off the nearer of two runs fed by the riffle upstream, which supplied the Medium Olive duns on which it was feeding. I lost it!! I never tried deliberately to find it, and I never saw it again; but the experience of my brief acquaintance with that trout taught me that they forage, and that they cover a fair distance in so doing — the fish was hooked and lost about fifty yards from his resting lie under the willow. ) Typical Movement Many trout will lie up in pools all day, particularly the larger fish, and move out into the head streams or drop back into the tails to take advantage of an early morning, or an evening, hatch of up-wings or caddis, or a fall of spent females of either type of aquatic fly. Alternatively, they may be found, in poor light, minnowing in the marginal waters. Late evening and nocturnal movement is typical of both brown trout and sea trout, particularly in the summer months. Relatively little fly fishing is practised on deep pools, exceptions being wet-fly fishing at dusk and after dark, or dry-fly fishing at any time when trout are active at the surface. If more brown trout anglers fished our big, deep pools using the flies, lines and methods employed on still water fisheries, the results could be quite surprising. Our American counterparts, on their rivers, have long been less conservative in their approach to fishing the deeper water of pools than we have here in the UK. Sea trout fishers do use pretty hefty surface lures and sunken lures at times, but this series is about brown trout fishing. So, perhaps, it is better not to encourage others to over-exploit these havens, as they generally do hold the biggest trout, and, at certain times of year, they may hold a fair head of convalescent fish.
River Flats River Flats — not an address used by tenement dwellers, but the last of the river features to be discussed in detail in this series. Anglers in the UK, both trout and salmon fishing enthusiasts, often talk about streams, and no doubt the reader has wondered why they have not been described so far. Well, they have. The term, stream, is a general reference used to cover a body of water in appreciable motion. The terms, riffle and run are, I hope, more specific and they should mean more now to the reader who is a newcomer to fishing than they did at the start of this series. In defining a flat, it is fair to say that it is a distribution of water over a relatively wide area, while a stream is a concentration of that water into a riffle or a run, depending upon the contours of the river bed. Of course, a flat can be followed by a riffle that is every bit as wide as the flat itself, but the riffle into which the flat is transformed will be running at a faster pace, and it will be shallower. Referring back to the text and the images describing and depicting the riffle near the mouth of the
Crowdundle Beck, the riffle starts at the foot of a long flat, which is wadable for all of its area, it picks up pace as it shallows on the slope, and it is transformed into a strong run down the far bank, with an area of flat water from the cheek of the run to the marginal water at the near side of the river. As with rivers and runs, the flows through flats can vary considerably in speed; but the ideal flat for the angler is a relatively broad expanse of water, moving at a moderate pace, and providing bank to bank access for anglers in thigh waders for much of its area. I did say the ideal flat! The relatively shallow nature of this feature, when it is unshaded, permits excellent light penetration which encourages the growth of aquatic plants. In what I would call a good year, the ideal flat would have a thirty to fifty per cent coverage of ranunculus, for the more weed, the more grazing and, hopefully, the more larvae of the olives and similar plant-loving insects, upon which fly fishing depends. Gentle Flow Because flats have a more gentle flow than riffles, they provide less aeration and turbulence than the latter, so they may be less likely to hold permanent, prime lies, depending upon the other features with which they may be endowed. They may not produce as many invertebrates as riffles, but they are certainly a good second best to riffles as far as the general provision of trout food is concerned. They offer some advantages over riffles, but they do have their disadvantages. Trout are far more easily observed in flats than in riffles, but the gentler flow of flats demands a more stealthy approach by the angler. Flats become more fishable as the plants of the water and the river bank develop, providing pockets and channels in the flow, and screening the trout and their prey in the margins. The ranunculus channels of the ideal flat will attract and hold a fair head of resident trout for much of the season, as will the odd sheltering boulder or depression in the gravel bed; while the burgeoning of the leaves on overhanging bushes and trees will encourage trout to take up summer lies, in which nature provides both overhead cover and a supply of falling terrestrial insects. Trout will enjoy such lies until and unless predation or water conditions dictate otherwise. Often, a pool tail is a flat, where the river’s full width does not change, but where the water shallows and increases in speed in order to maintain the overall flow. Likewise, we see riffles run into flats, where they deepen or widen and lose pace as, again, the overall flow of the water is maintained. In shallow rivers, in which riffles, runs and flats are the more dominant features, with few pools of significant depth, fly fishing should be at its best, but not necessarily at its most interesting. For the latter requirement to be met, the river must have pools also, and glides — a sort of cross between a run and a flat, those gently surging stretches which look slick and glassy, for want of a better description. It is the study of all these features, knowing the part they play, knowing what each contributes in the way of food provision, shelter, comfort and protection, which enables the angler to ‘read the water.’ Then, having learned something about the habits of the trout and those of its prey, the anLocating In-Season Trout When trout are feeding freely at the surface, taking emerging, or fully dry, aquatic insects ( duns of the ephemeroptera species, midge ‘buzzers’ or adults, reed smuts, sedges or stoneflies etc ) or when
they are taking various egg-laying females, spent flies or hapless, windblown terrestrials, spotting them is relatively easy, Because the rise of a trout to a fly is more noticeable on the smoother water of flats, some anglers may look for evidence of trout feeding upon them before concentrating on the rougher water of riffles or cheeks of runs for their sport. On a number of occasions, many years ago, I was privileged to watch fellow club member of Penrith Angling Association, Howard Walton, my former woodwork teacher while I attended Samuel King’s School, Alston fishing the wet fly on the Eden. He was probably the finest exponent of upstream wet fly in the club, and he often took up his stance at the top of a flat, fishing in an apparently desultory, leisurely manner, across and down, as he waited for the first duns of a hatch to appear. When the first dun on the flat was still being swallowed, Howard’s attitude changed remarkably. First, there was the stealthy move up into the foot of the riffle, then his fly presentation became an energetic, forty-five degrees upstream cast with his 9ft 6in cane rod held high so that, very often, the leader alone carressed the water. The rod lead the flies down the flow, and when a rise to his flies occurred, it was seen and tightened upon before the trout felt any resistance at the hook. Often, as I said to him one day while we shared a pic-nic lunch on the bank, he was virtually fishing a dry fly, as his top dropper received only a token bath now and again, depending upon the trout’s behaviour. Now who thought that high-sticking was a relatively modern method of presenting and fishing a fly? Howard died in 2008, in his mid-nineties. The above describes detection of trout feeding in the daytime, but even in the poor light at the end of a summer day, the sipping rises to spent spinners can be distinguished on flats or in the flat water at the tails of pools; and the splashing of trout rising to scuttling sedges is so audible that we may be guided accurately by sound alone. The latter example, however, is part of a more specialised branch of dry fly fishing — late evening and nocturnal sedge-fly fishing — the beginner is more concerned with locating trout by day. The Conveyor Belt With a scattering of floating duns coming down the water, the river may be regarded as a living conveyor belt of food. The trout in moving water may be expected to stay ‘on station’, maintaining their position in the most advantageous feeding lie which their size, and that of the opposition, permits. So long as they are hungry and as long as the hatch continues, the trout will move to the fly, often wth monotonous regularity, but almost invariably with the least expense of energy on their part. It is important to remember the last point, because the fish can not afford to expend more energy in pursuing its food than that amount which the food will replace when consumed. If food is scarce, and trout have to go looking for it, as is often the case in many infertile hill tarns and streams, the food obtained may do little more than replace the energy expended — the trout grows slowly. In a fertile river, lying alongside the conveyor belt of a quality feeding-lane, the ‘boss’ trout occupies the best feeding position. It may feed very well, at the expense of the minimum amount of energy — it grows quickly. Below The Surface
So much for the more obvious, surface feeding activity which takes place on our rivers. It may look pretty impressive at times, but it is nowhere near as important as the feeding which takes place below the surface of a clean and fertile river. Even when taking into account the falls of terrestrial insects which land, seasonally, upon the water, the bulk of food taken by trout comprises underwater fare. Every aquatic fly seen at the surface spent almost its entire life underwater, and although the majority may well have had to fight their way to the surface in order to emerge, many of the adults of the larger stoneflies and the larger stone-clinging, up-winged flies (such as the large green dun ) are not seen by trout as ascending nymphs, because they crawl out of the water in the marginal shallows, very surreptitiously, many of the former choosing emergence under the cover of darkness. So, at the most vulnerable stage of their development, their emergence, they do not have to run the watery gauntlet shared by large dark olives, Mayflies, blue-winged olives and the like. But all have to return to the water in order to lay their eggs. The number of larvae consumed in a season must be colossal, because larvae are available all day and every day; during a heavy emergence, they are just so much easier to find. When we acknowledge that those flies seen afloat can be only a fraction, of varying size, of the whole underwater population of their particular species, then we must conclude that most feeding is practised, and most food is available, below the surface. Cannibal Trout Some experts claim that as much as ninety per cent of the trout’s food intake in rivers is in the form of sub-aquatic life. Taken to the limit, the food of the truly fish-eating or cannibal trout is one hundred per cent sub-aquatic. Surface food is extremely important on poor, infertile hill streams and tarns and lakes, where falls of terrestrials may be at the top of the menu, but we can regard it, in part at least, as a sporting bonus on fertile rivers. Conservation Of Energy
Conservation of energy is such an important factor in trout behaviour that I must add a personal experience from way back in the days of really prolific Large Dark Olive hatches on the Eden, say, thirty years ago. I had worked my way up a long flat below a long, wide, extremely productive riffle, picking off the odd trout with the dry fly. The main flow was down the opposite bank, which was rented by another club, and that flow was carrying most of the duns. I had to rely on the odd fly being blown on to our side of the flat by the prevailing wind. In the area where the riffle merged into the head of the flat, where a distinct slope started to level out, below a jumble of large boulders and smaller stones, on our side of the river there was an area of calmer water between a minor stream and our club bank. A trickle of duns was being borne by the current, only a fraction of the total hatch, but the wind was catching these ‘strays’ and wafting them into the shallow marginal water before me. Fortunately, I stopped to study them, basically to see how long it would take them to become air-
borne, as it was a cold, early April afternoon. Suddenly, and silently, a nose poked up out of the water, a trout slid up and over the fly in a classic head and tail rise, and triggered off a short spell of feeding, as four more trout rose, took a few duns apiece, and retired. They were in a space about the size of a billiards table, each with its own sector. Judiciously, and oh, so confidently, I placed my Dark Eden Olive dun in front of the spot where I believed the nearest trout to be — nothing. I checked the fly, dried it, ‘Permafloted’ it and tried again — nothing. I wasn’t going to be beaten, so, off came the tippet, on went a new, lighter point and a fresh fly. A few more duns had arrived on the water in front of me, but nothing stirred when I cast the dry fly and let it sit among them for a minute or so. A few more duns arrived, I lifted the fly from the water to make a false cast, and a trout rose, then another, then all five took a few flies each, and then stopped rising again, while I watched, listening to the penny dropping! Again, the few remaining duns were ignored. Again, the build up of duns began, and this time my fly was in there among them, and this time it was taken. In fact, it was taken four times as the cast was lengthened and the fly was put before the trout in succession. It took two sessions to hook the four unlucky fish, during which each trout came immediately to the dry fly, and each was coaxed gently away from the target area. The fifth fish got the message about as quickly as I did, I suppose. That lesson taught me two things. The first was the obvious one — they won’t always move around the water looking for flies, if they can wait for the flies to come to them. The second was that the next time I failed to rise a trout when there were a few flies about, and mine was ignored, despite covering a trout as precisely as I possibly could, I would not immediately blame myself for the lack of response. On another occasion, in a hatch of Medium Olives on a glorious May day, I had trout ignoring my fly in a stream of duns in a very narrow feeding lane. After a little study, I decided the trout were picking off about one in every four or five duns that passed over their heads. So, the fly was aerialised off to one side while I counted the flies following a rise, then it was replaced above the trout that had risen, and it was taken. Yes, random casting would probably have produced fish, but marking the rise, counting the duns that were ignored between rises by the same trout, and slipping in the artificial at the crucial time was a bit more scientific. Sadly, we see so few good hatches now that such observations are uncommon; but Mrtrout and I watched as the wind on the Eden veered during a fair hatch of Large Dark Olives on the Eden, back in April, and it changed the line of feeding activity from one side of a run to the other. The fish had been feeding in a small eddy near our bank, having been wafted there off the cheek of a run. The wind veered, and the flies followed the seam on the far side of the run, where we couldn’t cover them. We could easily have thought that we had put ‘our’ fish down, and carried on our way; but we took our time and realised that the wind was responsible, it just hadn’t been immediately obvious because we were in the lee of a high bank. You must not always blame yourself if things appear to go wrong.
Sub-Surface Feeding
I hope that I managed to convince readers of the previous article in this series that, while surface feeding activity is the most obvious aid to trout location for the beginner, most feeding in fertile rivers definitely takes place below the surface. A good hatch of large dark olives in March or April might last for an hour or two; on the better May days of two or three decades ago, particularly if the weather was warm and damp, a fly fishing day on the river was occasionally a series of minor hatches of medium olives, which provided several hours of fishing to a stream of emerging nymphs and duns, the damp air delaying the departure of the duns from the water. The rings, occasionally splashes, of rising fish could not be missed or mistaken for anything but trout activity; but some of the larvae and pupae of sedges or the larvae of stone flies and the up-winged species, those mentioned above, for example, will be available all twenty-four hours of the day. When trout are feeding upon mature up-wing nymphs, midge pupae or sedge pupae which are preparing to hatch or emerge, which is the more accurate term, they are pursuing these creatures when they are at their most vulnerable. The nymphs have left the shelter of their weed beds, mosses, stones or silt burrows (in the case of Mayflies) and, along with the maturing midge pupae and sedge pupae, they must make their way, very laboriously, to the surface. The majority are not particularly good swimmers, and, when emerging in riffles, they are swept along helplessly by the current. In a narrow, shallow feeding lane, where floating or drifting objects are naturally concentrated, it must be like thin soup down there at times. An Important Clue The immediately foregoing is a very important clue in the detection of unseen feeding activity; and it should suggest to the reader that wet-fly fishing ought to be more productive than dry-fly fishing for most of the time. If it is not, then it may be because the wet-fly fisher has not given sufficient thought to the location of sub-surface insects and sub-surface trout. In clear, relatively shallow streams, trout may be seen feeding on nymphs near the river bed, as in the description given in the December 2nd issue of this newspaper — that of an Eamont trout scraping nymphs from the underside of a slab of waterlogged wood. Trout may be seen at times burrowing into ranunculus tresses in pursuit of larvae, their tails are a giveaway. Less frequently, they may be seen pursuing stone fly ‘creepers’ in very shallow margins into which the larger species migrate, before leaving the water, by legging it under cover of darkness in some cases. A giveaway when trout are grubbing among the stones for creepers is their blue ‘nebs’. They do, undoubtedly, wear the skin off both the nose and a little of the bottom lip; I have seen them marked in that way; but not in recent seasons. These are examples of trout seeking out larvae which are in or under cover, and if we can not see them going through the motions, the optimistic angler knows or believes that they probably are, somewhere and at some time during the fishing day. Again, in clear, relatively shallow water, a trout may be seen feeding on larvae near the river bed or towards mid-water prior to an emergence of duns, for example. The giveaway is a more alert appearance of the trout, which comes ‘on the fin’ and which may be observed moving to one side or the other, or up and down, as it positions itself to intercept an item of food. Occasionally, the
observer might see the mouth of the trout open and close, revealing ‘the little white wink’ that indicates that an up-wing nymph or the pupa of a midge or a sedge has probably been taken. Emergers When trout are feeding on nymphs close to the surface, their movements may result in a series of definite bulges in the water. It may be said of them that they were ‘boiling’ at the ascending larvae. Then, when their prey are attempting to break through the ‘skin’ of the water ( which is a real barrier to the emerging insects) the trout may be seen making head and tail rises. Often, the dorsal fin breaks the surface, then the tip of the tail creates a swirl as the trout propels itself back down to its chosen feeding position. In this rise, the trout takes the nymph in a forward and down movement, leaving what is termed a kidney-shaped rise pattern at the surface — no bubble. When trout take fully floating flies, they usually leave a tell-tale bubble, as they take in the fly, some water and some air at the surface, before expelling the air and water through their gills as they move back into their feeding positions. When there are no obvious signs of shallow sub-surface activity, trout lying lower in the water may be more easily detected and studied by the angler who wears polarising glasses. When no activity can be observed at all, however, the angler must find the trout by a simple trial and error process, or, if sufficiently skilled, by the application of his knowledge of rivercraft, by ‘reading the water’. ‘Fishing blind’, or ‘fishing the water’ is covered later in this series
Locating Unseen Trout During the winter months, particularly when the weather is frosty, with rime decorating the bank side plant life and ice fringing the quiet shallows, long vacated by the annual crop of minnow fry, our rivers might appear to be devoid, totally, of both the trout and the insects upon which they feed. However, once spawning is over and the mature trout have returned to their more permanent residences, we may assume that the sheltering pools all harbour some recuperating adults, plus the immature native stock. We may also assume that there are many more aquatic insects and other food forms present than the winter scene suggests. My last 3-minute kick-sample of the year, carried out on the River Petteril on December 28th at a site which I have monitored since August, 2005, revealed about 60 olive-type larvae, only 1 heptagenid (stone-clinging up-wing larva), a noteworthy 65 cased caddis, 3 uncased caddis, 19 snails, 15 hog lice and 24 leeches. No shrimps or stonefly larvae, you will note, which is one of the reasons why the site is under my scrutiny, and no larvae of the blue-winged olive. The latter omission is explained by the fact that our favourite summer up-winged species over-winters in the egg stage. The above were found in fast water about knee deep. So, the food is there, but it is tucked safely away out of sight. When the river is carrying cold rain run-off, or snow water, the temperature of the water will be low enough to reduce movement of aquatic life forms to a minimum. Trout will be pretty inactive, and the invertebrates will be doing little foraging, because their metabolism, also, is governed by the water temperature. Should a mild spell occur, and the water warm up a little, invertebrate movement may increase as might that of the trout.
Gin Clear Water Again, when the river is running very low in summer, when the water may be gin clear (it used to be) and the sun beats down unmercifully, trout may be difficult to find in some stretches of water. Shallow, exposed tails of pools and flats may seem to be fishless, day after day — trout appearing in them only in relatively poor light. However, because of the improved water temperature, the invertebrate life may well be very actively foraging (often in the dense cover provided by moss and weeds) and the trout’s digestive systems will be working very efficiently, prompting them to feed whenever the opportunity arises. All the immediately foregoing will, of course, depend upon the water not becoming unfavourably warm. So, where are the fish? Taking into account the fact that fish are not to be seen in regular feeding lies because of the unfavourable conditions described above, the angler has to consider the basic requirements of comfort, shelter and protection. If the trout are in a sheltering lie, protected from prying eyes, we can’t expect to see them in quantity. So, they are possibly enjoying the comfort and shelter of the flank of a well-aerated run: they could be lying under the shade offered by bank side growth; taking it easy in the cool depths of a pool, or out in the weed channels of a gravelly flat well endowed with ranunculus. Where Pennine tributaries enter the Eden, there might be an influx of cooler water into a junction pool; and where there are little gullies or odd little ‘pots’ in the bed of a riffle, trout might be lying there, hidden by the turbulence, right next door to a fishy ‘take-away’. A thorough knowledge of the trout’s feeding habits, and the conditions or situations which meet its needs for comfort, shelter and safety, will enable us to locate them with almost unerring accuracy, at almost any time of the year, in any state of the water, and at any time of the day. We may not be able to make them feed, but we should be able to place a fly or bait within spitting distance of them. We can practise trout location in our imagination, but let me give one of the best examples of an aid to trout location, certainly one of the best so far as summer, day time trout fishing is concerned —-the study of upstream, clear water worming. Assimilation Of Knowledge Now, I know that this series of articles was designed to aid the beginner, if only just a little, in the assimilation of sufficient knowledge of water craft to enable him, or her, to find trout and to tempt them with an artificial fly; but the fly fisher can learn a great deal by studying the skilful upstream worm fisher. I do not wish to promote live bait fishing for trout. Indeed, it has been said of me that I am a dry fly purist, (which is totally incorrect), but I know from past experience that there are similarities in the methods of approach and presentation, and general theory of fishing, of the little upstream worm and the little upstream nymph or wet fly. More on this topic next week. Forum Footnote This series was in print from November, 2006 to March, 2007. The site which I was monitoring on the River Petteril, which joins the River Eden in Carlisle, had suffered oil pollution from the late 1960s for at least a decade. It has suffered chronic farm effluent pollution, and is still affected by it,
albeit less severely these days; and a recent extension to a village sewage works a couple of miles upstream has helped to improve the diversity of the invertebrate life. My monitoring started in summer, 2005, and I had to wait until October, 2007 before I found my first freshwater shrimps, and my first sign of rising trout, on the 3/4 mile stretch which runs down from the M6 bridge close to Junction 41. Many of you will have passed over the river on your journeys back and forth over The Border. Hopefully, the return of a few shrimps, and the improvement in numbers of BWO, stonefly and heptagenidae larvae, are not just the result of a couple of wet summers, diluting the remaining pollutants, as this little river, which escorts the railway line from Penrith to Carlisle, was an unacclaimed gem in the 1960s. I have been invited to work in a modest advisory capacity with a number of bodies who will be giving the river the attention, and carrying out the research, which it deserves. Perhaps, one day, I will be able to record the successful outcome of their joint effort to restore an abused and long-neglected stream to its former state.
Upstream Worm, A Forgotten Art The expert clear water, upstream worm fisher ( there can’t be many left ) knows from experience that when trout are rising freely to insects on the surface, or when they are feeding in mid-water, prior to an emergence of flies, his method is not likely to prove to be as successful as that of the expert upstream fly-fisher. Under conditions which deterred the average daytime fly-fisher, however, bright sunshine and low water, no obvious movement of trout, the best of the wormers could usually catch their breakfasts. When clear water worm fishing was permitted on some local club waters, some anglers became very adept at fishing both the upstream worm and the upstream fly; the most skilful, a tiny minority, used both wet and dry fly techniques. They were the lucky ones, because they could switch from upstream worm to upstream fly as conditions dictated. They were also among the most knowledgeable anglers, because the consistency of their results depended upon their ability to read the water. However, as more clubs, syndicates and private owners turned their attention increasingly to the conservation and protection of stocks, severely restricting or banning the use of worm fishing methods, so the skill and knowledge of the upstream wormer were wasted, to a great extent. Following on the relatively easy fly fishing of mid-March to about mid-May on our local rivers, and the more satisfying sport of late spring, those fly fishers who wished to carry on fishing through the ‘dog days’ of summer, when rivers ran clear and their levels were often low, had either to restrict their fishing mainly to early morning or late evening, or they had to learn how to locate and catch trout by day, under adverse conditions. Finding Prime Lies In any river there are several types of fishing lie. The most obvious are the feeding lies, in which we see the quarry rising. Most of these will be of a temporary nature, in riffles and flats, prior to and during an emergence of adults, during egg-laying sessions, or when terrestrials stray on to the water.
After obvious feeding is over, when the majority of the trout have returned to their more permanent, dormitory areas, the beginner could be excused for assuming that the fish would be found only in the deeper water of the runs and pools. In the days of silk lines and flies only a tiny percentage of which were leaded, those areas were mainly out of reach of the fly fisher: the float-fishing or ledgering enthusiast could reach them, but only if those methods were allowed by those who controlled the fishing. The expert clear water, upstream worm fisher, using fly rod and line, knew from experience that the riffles and flats were not the fishless areas that the uninitiated might think they were. Where there was a known feeding lie in a riffle or a flat, beside which cover, comfort and protection existed, the upstream worm fisher assumed that a trout or two could be found. He carried a mental picture of such hot spots, or prime lies, wherever he fished, and this enabled him to recognise the hot spots on water with which he was not familiar. He also knew that he could rely upon hot spots to provide sport quite consistently, because removal of the trout which occupied a prime feeding position usually prompted the next biggest in the area to move in and take over the lie —- and so on. Easily Spooked Fish Our upstream worm fisher knew that trout in relatively shallow water, including those in the deeper pockets and channels etc, were easily spooked, and that, once frightened, they were not easily tempted. So, he learned to fish from downstream of the lies, using the trout’s blind spot to his advantage. He also learned to work very carefully, quietly and steadily; using the background to his advantage; keeping a low profile when exposed and moving slowly against cover when conditions allowed him to remain upright. By casting a weighted worm tackle upstream, the clear water fisher could explore the depths of a run, as the bait was retrieved at, or near, the bottom —- where trout were likely to be found if not feeding on active insects either prior to, or during, a hatch of flies. In the slower moving water of a pool, the bait could be fished at considerable depth using relatively small weights, and it was often this approach that produced the better trout of the day — even when there was no sign at all of trout feeding at the surface.
Exploiting Prime Lies The best upstream, clear water worm fishers of yesteryear, as described in the previous article on river craft, relied upon their ability to identify prime lies, or hot spots, to provide them with some of the most consistent sport enjoyed during the difficult days of our more memorable summers. To find these hot spots, we must study the surface of the river. The unruffled water surfaces of placid flats and pools tell us very little about what lies below, whereas the patterns on the surface of riffles and the shallower runs can tell us a great deal. Bulges indicate the presence of submerged stones or boulders, while a swirl coupled with a change in direction at the surface may suggest the presence of a submerged groin, ledge or a log, for example. Pockets of calmer water are often an indication of depth, while weed channels simply shout out for our attention. Where there are current creases in the water, the join between a definite current and
the slower water which flanks it, we may expect to find shelter. A prime example is the cheek of a stream, which accounts for so many pulls on wet flies as they fish into the gentler flow at the nearside edge of a run. Feeding Lanes When trout are not seen to be feeding, those in prime lies are usually very close to rich feeding lanes, which are the channels or narrow seams in which concentrations of food are most often found. Wherever floating food forms, or submerged food forms, are brought together by the natural shaping of the water, fish will feed. If such areas offer the trout’s other needs, fish will stay. Prime examples are relatively easily found. In our rocky rivers and streams, boulders, ledges, submerged ridges, groins and fallen trees etc. will funnel floating objects into the accelerated flows which they create. Again, consider a wide, flat pool carrying a variety of insects spread across its width. Where the pool narrows, before emptying into the next pool in line, food will be concentrated. Likewise, any submerged objects will be concentrated where the pool shallows and speeds up to maintain the overall, average flow rate. Where ranunculus beds form on riffles, flats and tails of pools, their surface growth channels the floating food into more concentrated lines or lanes. Where there is foam on the water, we have one of the best indicators of all, because the floating insects, when they emerge, will usually find themselves being washed into the foam lanes by the same surface currents which concentrate the scum, bubbles and other minor items of flotsam and jetsam. Effect Of Wind Still water anglers, both those afloat and those on foot, soon learn that where there are foam lines on the water there are also likely to be insects; and we must remember that the wind can play a very important part in concentrating food into lanes on our rivers. If, for example, the prevailing wind is blowing from the west, on exposed stretches of water the emerging duns, midges and sedges, etc, will be blown towards the east bank of the river. However, we should also be prepared to exploit the windward bank, particularly from late spring to autumn, when the wind may blow caterpillars, spiders, beetles and flies out of the trees and grasses which border the river, depositing them in any sheltered water near that bank. Fishing Blind In the absence of a rise, the dry fly fisher who fishes his floating olive dun, pheasant tail or black gnat through those areas which he identifies as prime lies, is ‘fishing blind’ or ‘fishing the water’. Confidence in the knowledge that trout will be found in a prime lie for much of the season is vital. At first sight, fishing blind with an upstream dry fly or wet nymph may appear to be both difficult and unrewarding; but I know from long experience that fishing the dry fly in prime lies can be extremely productive The method brought up fish to the dry fly for my old pal, Ken Thompson, and I on a succession of trout season opening days, March 20th, during the 1960s and 1970s when, admittedly, there were both more trout and more dark olives to be found. We failed to catch trout on dry fly on only three opening days, due to the intense cold spell of 1962/63, snowfall in 1968 and snow water in 1969; but on one of our better joint outings, March 20th, 1967, on a day virtually devoid of rises,
we rose and hooked 19 River Petteril trout using dry flies only. That underlines the importance of learning how to identify prime lies, and it says something about our favourite little beck at the start of the season. Forum footnote. At 2.0pm on our day in 1967, Ken and I were ‘level pegging’ with 8 trout each netted; then we found a large, plywood tool box in the river. While I emptied and wrestled it to the bank, and to my car, about 80 yards away, Kenneth hooked another trio. That was it. Moral of the story? Don’t be distracted until the fish stop rising.Did it really matter? No, I still have the box. A little reminder. You can sometimes fish a riffle in wellies, and you can always fish them in thigh waders. Remember, on our northern rivers, we need to see stones projecting from the water on our better riffles. Any more than wellie to thigh wader deep, and they become potential runs. In true runs, you will have a job standing up in the flow, and in the deeper runs, your hat will float!! The finest flats are those shallow enough to be waded with relative comfort, preferably no more than bum deep. In little becks, a pool may be no more than a foot or two in depth: in a river, proper, you might wade the margins in thigh waders; but that is where the better food sites might be.
‘Shotgun’ Technique When the experienced and knowledgeable angler faces a favoured stretch of water under adverse conditions, no movement of trout and no sign of insect activity, he may well decide to fish prime lies, as described previously, relying upon his ability to find and attract resident fish to his fly. The beginner may not have acquired the ability to read the water as accurately as the former, but he is still in with an excellent chance, provided he has the necessary patience and a fair degree of casting skill and stamina. The expert angler will concentrate on known pots, pockets, seams and channels etc, reducing the odds, while the beginner, bursting with enthusiasm and the desire to learn as much as his, hopefully, open mind can absorb, may have to resort to ‘shotgun’ presentation. The title is American in origin —our counterparts in the USA just love to give every form of cast, approach and presentation a title — and that is good for the game, especially for beginners. It is a style which my friends and I have used on large rivers which were both familiar and unfamiliar to us; and it is simply the most methodical and painstaking of all. We didn’t have a name for the method, but I’ve heard it described as ‘scatter casting’ in the past Dry Fly First The first choice for my regular fishing companions and I, when fishing ‘blind’, would be the dry fly method. We would concentrate on known hot spots and hope to bring trout up to the fly. Dry fly is the most exciting of methods because it is such a visual method, and it is also the easiest. Wind and drag can cause problems, but at least any rises to the fly are usually easily seen. Another advantage is that the dry fly man is not too concerned about depth — although he would rather cover a trout in
six feet of water than one in a mere six inches. The wet fly or nymph fishing enthusiast has the advantage where good trout may be contacted at depth. Where there are strong surface flows over deep lies, trout may not rise to a dry fly, but they are often able to feed easily at, or near, the river bed. Modern ‘bugging’ techniques permit the presentation of nymph, shrimp or caddis patterns etc, using heavily weighted dressings to rake the depths of runs which were once accessible only to the worm fisher or the spinning enthusiast. Often, the techniques demand wading in water that is waist- to- chest deep —- a bit daunting for the beginner, and to some anglers, a bit too disturbing of the trout’s habitat. So, leaving Czech and Polish bugging for the day when our beginner has gained more confidence in his angling ability, he can opt for ‘shotgun’ casting to cover a lot of water which is easier to wade and easier to read. Ideally, he will have before him a good-sized area of holding water. It will be shallow enough to permit comfortable and safe wading, but it will have patches and pockets which have a bit more than the average depth. Approaching the water from downstream, assuming he has permission to fish both banks, the angler should aim to fish systematically as much of the entire expanse before him as is practical, omitting that which is obviously too shallow. He must then divide the area into an imaginary grid of one foot squares ( one yard squares if time is limited ) and, starting at a short casting distance, using either the dry or the wet fly, he should cover every imaginary square from left to right, say, on the first row of his grid. If no fish are moved, he may then lengthen his cast and try a second sweep, and so on until he attracts a fish or he has exhausted the possibilities within comfortable reach. If he is on one of the bigger riffles or flats of the Eden, he may find that the process can be repeated several times as he weaves his way, left to right, across the river, before moving upstream to repeat his coverage of the water, now right to left, on the next row of the grid. Keeping On The Move It is an excellent means of getting to know a river. Some anglers, particularly beginners, may find ‘shotgun’ casting either very taxing or boring at first, but skill will be acquired, casting will become more the automatic practice that it is already for the expert, and the newcomer will soon learn to interpret the meaning of every movement of the water. This method also teaches beginners the importance of keeping on the move. How often has the reader seen a fly fisher flogging a stream from which the observer knew that even the most tolerant of trout was already long-gone? As in lake or tarn fishing for wild brown trout, given two anglers of equal skill, the angler who covers the most shoreline is the one who is most likely to catch the most fish. If a chosen riffle or flat has a fair coverage of ranunculus, then nature will have made an irregular, but very interesting, pattern for the angler to follow. Such pocket and channel fishing is excellent for improving casting accuracy and presentation, and it is my favourite approach to low water, daytime dry fly fishing in high summer. When we had more luxuriant growths of ranunculus in our local rivers, it was possible to go out in daytime in high summer and winkle trout out of those green mazes.
More On Fishing Blind To reiterate a little of what has been written in this series regarding daytime coverage of water in the absence of rising fish, the angler may fish quite quickly through known hot spots, he may cover those which he recognises as prime lies, relying upon his ability to read the water, or if he is less experienced, he may opt for ‘shotgun’ coverage of any sizeable riffles and flats which are easy to wade, adopting an upstream approach. This helps mask his approach to the fish, and if he decides to fish wet fly or nymph, his upstream presentation enables him to fish more easily at depth. At this point, I must emphasize the importance of confidence, as it can have a profound effect upon the outcome of a day’s hard effort. Every cast should be presented and fished out as though it was about to attract the biggest fish in the river. Many years ago, before setting out to fish all night for the sea trout of the Esk and Liddell, Annan or Dalbeattie Urr, I would occasionally ask my old buddy, Ken, how he fancied our chances, taking into account the state of the weather and the night sky. Invariably, he would say that he expected to catch a bucketful, and that if he didn’t feel that confident, he wouldn’t go out! Confidence has an incalculable value in all sport — watch a snooker player when things are going wrong for him, and what about our recent Ashes effort? The best anglers are often quietly confident, in company, but verbally optimistic in private! Ken was both. Fishing Blind In Weed Beds Fishing blind in the channels and pockets in ranunculus weeds is one of the most satisfying ways of winkling out trout in the difficult days of a sunny late spring or during the dog days of summer. Not only is there, very often, an absence of rising fish on the open river; there is also, again very often, no sign of fish in the channels and pockets —- but they are there, if there is comfort to go with the cover which is clearly in evidence, and provided there is a bit of depth. How do we fish them? Weed channels shout out for an upstream presentation of a dry fly, my first choice, always, or a nymph, when trout are hesitant about zooming up to the dry fly: but I would advise keeping the method simple — one fly is enough for me in a weedy situation. The next thing to remember is never to cast immediately to the head of a channel, where the parting of the tresses creates it. Almost invariably, I have found, the biggest trout in a channel is at the top of a queue in which the number of fish depends upon the length of the open water. Placing a dry fly right in the ‘V’ at the head will almost certainly result in ‘lining’ the lesser fish lower down the channel. When spooked, they often scoot straight up the water and alarm all in their flight path. Result, one wasted hot spot. No, the first cast is made to cover the bottom couple of feet of the channel, before it narrows or shallows out into nothing, or flows over and through the start of another clump of weed. If nothing moves to the fly, do not make more than a couple of casts. If Tommy Trout is at home, he usually answers the door pretty promptly. My theory is that trout often lie only just obscured and sheltered by the right or left weed bed tresses. When the fly passes over them, they may not see it
directly, but, and you have to believe this, there is a better than evens chance of them seeing the shadow of the fly on the river bed. If a moving shadow can alarm them, surely it can also attract them, under the right circumstances. Regarding movement and the trout, I have a very simple philosophy. Speaking for the trout, ‘If it moves, and it’s smaller than me, I can eat it. If it moves, and it’s bigger than me, it can eat me! Hey up!’ I concluded the foregoing many years ago, having caught many trout from weed channels in which, very very often, fish could not be seen, despite my wearing Polaroid glasses and observing lies from high vantage points. Having fished a channel tail, the cast is lengthened and the next possible unseen taker is covered, and so on. It is infinitely more advisable to try to remove possible telltale trout by fishing for them than by frightening them. Now, as far as scaring the trout goes, it is always advisable to try angling the cast slightly to put some line over the weed, if possible. I will go further and suggest that it often pays to drop the fly deliberately on the growth. I would like a pound for every trout that has taken a dry fly that was dropped gently on the greenery at the head of a channel, and then tweaked ( fingers crossed, in case it landed hook down ) carefully until it reached the water, to be taken often within a very few inches of the point of entry. Fishing In Bedlam On numerous occasions when addressing fishing classes, I have quoted two incidents which occurred on one outing on the Eden on what used to be The Fetherston Arms rented fishing, in Jim Scott’s time as landlord. By my flirting too cleverly with the weeds, twice, a dry fly accidentally hooked a little white ranunculus flower on the fringe of an open channel. A couple of very tentative tweaks produced a rise each time from two trout which virtually hooked themselves, as each plucked the fly free, in succession. Both risen fish were landed, minus flowers! It may sound unlikely, but it is true. Would I lie?
What To Fish When there is an emergence of flies, of one or more species, in progress, the beginner should be able to make an acceptable choice of artificial from the dry flies or the wet flies, nymphs and pupae in his fly boxes. When there is no surface activity, no movement of either flies or fish, he must rely upon his own limited experience, the help of an experienced tutor or friend or upon knowledge gleaned from the angling press, books etc., or opt for general purpose artificials. One of the great advantages of having a keen interest in entomology ( the study of insect life ) is that the entomologist / angler knows which species should be on the water at any time of year. If he has a knowledge of their life cycle, he will have a pretty good idea which are still in the egg stage, which are still in the early stages of larval development, which are in the later stages of larval development and which are in the pupal stage, in the case of caddis. So, the ‘bug hunter’ will know what the trout
could be observing beneath the surface at any time during the season, if he knows his water and the ‘insect calendar’. For example, at the season’s start, he will know that mature large dark olive nymphs and those of two or three of the stone fly species will have reached the stage where they are simply waiting for the right conditions to encourage them to emerge. With nothing on the surface, he may select a Greenwell’s Spider, an Olive Nymph or Waterhen Bloa to copy the large dark olive larvae; or a team of drab North Country Spiders to suggest the slim, dull appearance of the early stone flies, February Red, if he lived in hope of an emergence of these stone flies. Later in the season, he would have a far greater choice of possibilities. Fly Selection Aids Relatively few fly-fishers seem to have the time, or the inclination, to study aquatic insect life or that of the other invertebrates which inhabit our rivers and lakes. Not all have a friendly advisor, but for those brand new to the game, fly selection aids have been made in the past. One particular type was a give-away incentive to buy a popular angling magazine — a sort of ‘dial a fly’ device. It was a pretty fair guide for general use, but not all species are found in all rivers. Apart from hard earned experience, which is of particular value on the angler’s home waters, the best guide to fly selection is a quick examination of the river bed. Curtain Catch If the angler places a fine-meshed screen ( old nylon ‘lace’ curtain material, about eighteen inches square, attached to two short garden canes ) at an angle to the river bed, and then has the gravel and weeds a short distance upstream disturbed, the screen will collect samples of the food forms available in the gravel, on the stones and weeds and in the silt. It helps to have an accomplice, but it can be done, solo. Examination will reveal the more common food forms, the most colourful or the most active — if they are turned out into a suitable tray or dish. Some anglers go even further by setting up a vice and tying up a few artificial copies on the spot. Not many anglers can, or wish to, do this, but they can prepare themselves fairly well to fish both known and unknown waters in the absence of a rise by carrying a selection of both floating and sinking, general purpose patterns. General Purpose Flies The most important feature of such artificials is not that they copy accurately a specific food form, but that they have a similarity of appearance or movement to a variety of aquatic creatures. We all have our favourites, some very well known, some obscure, but among the all-time best wet fly patterns we must figure the following : — March Brown Spider, Pheasant Tail, Gold-ribbed Hare’s Ear and Black Spider, all of which have been dressed in a myriad variations. Although I have not seen the true March brown upwing on a local water for many years, they used to feature, if only sparsely, and not importantly, in spring hatches on one or two rivers. Later in the season, the false, or late, March brown is still seen frequently, but the all-year-round appeal of the March Brown Spider suggests that it is a rough copy of a variety of invertebrates. The natural March
brown is a very big fly, and yet the popular size, locally, is a size 14 for rivers. That alone suggests that the wet artificial is probably taken for something other than the large, squat, brown, March brown nymph with its heavily speckled legs. I would suggest that March Brown Spiders, size 12, 14 and 16 are good, general-purpose copies of freshwater shrimps and water hog-lice, or the nymphs of the several members of the heptageniidae family of flies which inhabit our rocky and stony streams. This family includes the two species above, plus large brook dun, large green dun, autumn dun, olive upright, yellow May dun and dusky yellow streak —- we have them all in the Eden system. The artificials may also be taken for sedge larvae and pupae — who knows, and who cares, as long as the variations work?
The Versatile Pheasant Tail For ease of differentiation between anglers’ names for natural insects and anglers’ names for their artificial copies, as used in this column, I shall continue to use capital letters for the names of the latter. The Pheasant Tail, the second on the list of general purpose, all-year-round wet and dry flies, appears in a very wide range of modified copies of the original pattern. The original was, I understand, a Derbyshire dry fly, dressed with a honey dun cock hackle ( rather hard to find ), cock pheasant tail barbs ( ‘fibres’ ) for the body, tail of honey dun hackle barbs, and a fine gold wire rib. The popular local dry pattern has a game red cock hackle in front of blue dun cock, with tail whisks of mixed game red and blue dun cock barbs; while the wet spider is dressed using hen hackles of the same colours. Many years ago, the very effective Pheasant Tail Nymph evolved, at the vice of the late and great Frank Sawyer — an even simpler pattern, using only pheasant tail barbs for tail and body and copper wire for weight, no silk, no hackles. Using this basic form as a model, anglers have developed a large range of nymph patterns, mostly for use on still waters, but popular everywhere, in which the thorax is dressed with a variety of coloured dubbing material ( red, green, orange, yellow, black and olive, e.g. ) These features are termed, ‘trigger points’; and fluorescent materials are often used for added attraction, while a variety of coloured tinsels dressed as the thorax give an extra flash which may well copy the sheen of the flank or belly of fish fry. Modern Dressings Many modern dressings include dyed pheasant tail material, so the list of possibilities in the production of pheasant tail artificials is almost endless. The original dry fly pattern and the game red and blue dun hackled variant are fine copies of several up-winged duns and spinners found on our rivers and lakes, while the more numerous wet versions copy the nymphs of numerous up-winged species and the pupae of some of the even more numerous midges of our lakes and reservoirs. The larger patterns, dressed on long-shank hooks, may well be taken as copies of cased sedge larvae, also. The Imperfect Floater
The Gold-ribbed Hare’s Ear has been popular in its basic form for many years as either a hackle-less wet fly or an imperfect floater. When treated with a water-repellent, the picked out hairs of the dubbed body hold the artificial in the surface film of the water, where the angler hopes it will be taken for an emerging up-winged dun. With the addition of a cock hackle at the shoulder, slim versions are good copies of several fly species, but they probably score best as copies of larvae and pupae. Given a ‘shell-back’ of plastic, raffene, latex or one of the more modern synthetics, they can be adapted to represent shrimps and hog-lice, also. Again, long-shank hook versions may be taken as copies of sedge larvae, cased or uncased. The Black Spider The last of my list of four all-rounders for the beginner ‘fishing blind’ exists in almost as many variations as we see with Pheasant Tail. In its simplest form it may be dressed with a black tying silk body, coupled with a single shoulder hackle from either a natural or dyed cock or hen cape. Add a silver rib and tails of golden pheasant tippet, and we have a Black Pennell. Substitute peacock herl for the body material, and we have Black And Peacock Spider; substitute tinsel for the body material, and we have Black And Silver Spider, or any other colour we may choose for the body. In its various forms, the Black Spider can be dressed to copy black midge, black gnat, black ant, hawthorn fly, heather fly, various land and water beetles and snails, spiders and even fish fry — all depending upon the size of the artificial and the materials used in forming the body. In nature, there are very many black or dark-hued insects, so a black or very dark artificial is a logical choice. The same may be said, of course, regarding olive or greenish-hued artificials, as there are also a myriad olive or greenish natural insects; which may explain the popularity of the Greenwelll’s Glory. The reader could throw a couple of Olive Nymphs into his fly box, to make up a set of five, with variations; but the original dressings should take their share of trout when ‘fished blind’, provided they are skilfully presented and fished. More often than not, it is the method that catches the fish, the choice of fly coming second in importance. The ‘wrong’ fly fished in the right way usually outfishes the ‘right’ fly fished in the wrong way. Well, I think so, provided the chosen fly looks ‘insecty’! Yes, I know there is no such word.
Written By Terry Cousin
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