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.....

Updated River fly diary page for 2016

Finally got round to updating the River fly diary page on the blogs. The fly above is an olive upright. Correct me if I am wrong? A big eyed male. It landed on the car and the colour deepened as I took several photos of it

Lamprey spawning on the Derbyshire Wye

Early May 2016 saw me fly fishing along the banks of the River Wye, not far from Bakewell. After recovering my fly line from the edge of the river - those wild rainbows occasionally do a dash to the bankside to drop the hook - I looked into the clear water and saw.......

something in the water....

Closer inspection revealed spawning lamprey. The first time in my adult life that I had seen them. I counted about 8 of them. The upper photo shows the size of the 'scrape' that they had made. They were about 5" or 12.5cm long. Impressively one of them was fanning its tail end across the gravel, shifting the stones, preparing the spawning bed.
Lamprey were spotted on another stretch of the river some days later - on the Peacock Open Day in fact.
They belong to a primitive group of fish that have sucker-like mouths instead of teeth and jaws. As they mature they stop feeding and develop the sucker typical of a lamprey. Once the adults have spawned, they die. So having spent the first part of their lives hiding away in the mud of the river bed they emerge, spawn and die - apparently!