Emerging mayfly

A mayfly emerged fresh from the river. Its greenish hue was a colour I used in making some successful artifical foam bodied mayflys. See the river fly diary page for examples

Just to prove it wasn't my fishing bag altering the colour here it is from the trouts point of view!

Ogden day 10am Sunday 5th June 2016

Ogden Day, Sunday 5th June 2016 from 10 am just downstream of the main road bridge in Bakewell.
On this day it will be one hundred and fifty one years since Mr James Ogden demonstrated his floating flies on the Derbyshire Wye below Bakewell Bridge. The day after, the dry-fly-only rule was adopted on the Peacock Fly fishing water and has been in place ever since. 
There will be a re-enactment of his demonstration to catch a fish. Let us hope he is successful!

Ladies of the Stream - fly fishing day on the Derwent near Hathersage

A wonderful stretch of the Derwent. And what beautiful weather we had. The following shots were provided by Hilary and give a good idea of the enjoyable day we had.

There were seven of us to fish, though Isobel and Juliet mostly guided during the day. Mayfly were starting to come off and the fishing was most productive.

The colouring on the wild brownies is delightful.

The olive uprights were in abundance at the end of the day, flying in clouds around us as we were packing up.
A great day. Thanks to all for attending and especially thanks to Juliet and Isobel for organising the day.

The mayfly begins!

Finally a warmer day. I don't usually choose to fish on a Sunday, but the weather was beautiful and so I decided to wander down to a quiet river with no footpaths, to fly fish.
Started off with the hawthorn - which caught. Finally, during the afternoon, saw a fish jump for a mayfly - so on went the Philip White hair-wing mayfly. Missed the first fish, but there were others that rose to the fly.
Yes, on that river the mayfly are certainly on. Hope it is the same wherever you are...
River fly diary page has the fly that started a slightly longer day than I had anticipated.

English riverfly survey reveals abysmal state of our once gin clear chalkstreams

Just to update yourselves on the poor state of our rivers, please follow the link to the Salmon & Trout Conservation Uk website.
Perhaps scroll down to the bottom of the page to make a donation to survey the health of more UK rivers?
To quote Paul Knight, Chief Executive of S&TC UK:

“Most of the rivers we analysed were impacted to some extent, although the chalk rivers were the worst.  England’s 200 or so chalkstreams form about 85% of the world’s total stock of this richly diverse and complex habitat.  Almost all of them are in a dismal state of decline. Plants, insects, fish, mammals and bird-life are suffering as a result of the loss of flylife, which plays a crucial role in the aquatic food chain. Basically lose your flylife and you will lose many other important species too.”

Mayfly, spinners and poachers

I think it was on the 17th of May, whilst walking down the river Bradford about 6 o'clock (not fishing|) on what seems to have been the only balmy evening so far this year; I was delighted to see mayfly coming off the river in reasonable numbers. Also some spinners - I think they were olive uprights, they had tremendously long tails - at least 3 times the body length. 

Unfortunately the balmy evening also brought out the chancers with spinning rod! A call to the river keeper followed. Apparently these 3 chaps in a white van with ladders on the top had already been moved off the river elsewhere the same evening. The police sirens arrived a little to late for the one river keeper trying to block in 3 mouthy individuals.

Ladies of the Stream - May 24th 2016 next womens fly fishing event

We have a day on the Derwent near Hathersage. A wonderful stretch of the Derbyshire Derwent.
If you are a female fly fisher do make contact to join us on what is our first day of this season.
Unfortunately our day on the Derbyshire Wye in April was cancelled due to dire weather conditions. We will rearrange a new date shortly
Let us hope on our day fly fishing we see a number of these emerging from the water!

This one emerged from the Lathkill just a couple of days ago - during heavy rain.....