Catching it, cooking it and eating it.

www.adventureflyfishinguk.co.uk

Hi All,
I have managed to escape to the Welsh Mountains for a few days. I try and get up there every year, generally on my own or with Loops the spaniel, this time however we were able to synchronise diaries to such an extent that my better half - Debs was able to come along. Now, those of you that read these blogs know that I like to travel deep in to the areas I explore, carrying everything I need with me, limiting the creature comforts I can pack. That doesn't really do it for Debs:

Adventure Fly Fishing UK does Glamping! Note the Scooby doo pillow in the tent...

It is fair to say that Debs is at most an 'occasional angler' but she holds dear very similar values to me - fishing in beautiful, natural environments and respect for the quarry. And so I am able to occasionally tempt her to come fishing with me with the promise of a great location and a fishy meal at the end of it. 

Fantastic location sorted, now where are the fish?

The fishing was slow, a bright day with a strong gusty wind, didn't help but I enticed plenty of splashes, swirls and tweaks and perhaps half a dozen small brownies to dries and then pulled wet flies. Debs plied her flies unmolested by such things for much of the day. Pressure mounted as we headed towards the close of the day with the prospect of nothing to add to our camping rations. A reversion to 'shock and awe tactics' by Debs, the most ridiculous, large and fluffy creation to be found in the deepest recesses of my fly box (she had long since exhausted all of the options from her boxes) and of course - instant success:

The smile of somebody that is not going to go hungry tonight

This was swiftly followed by another fish and a better one.

This fish was 'crunchy' to the touch. I have felt this many times before where trout (it seems in my experience to be mainly lake brown trout) have been gorging on snails and when you hold the fish you feel and hear the shells rubbing together. On this occasion though it was tiny clams, not something I have seen before:

Making the decision to kill fish is something I don't take lightly, I feel that when I kill one I accept the responsibility to respect the fish by creating from it a special meal. By 'special' I don't necessarily mean cordon bleu or something intricate from the final of masterchef, I mean one that is savoured by friends and family. In this case with fish in top condition and as fresh as it is possible to be the recipe was simple and stunningly tasty:

Salt, pepper and olive oil. Can you guess which one I caught?

Adventure Fly Fishing UK in Print

www.adventureflyfishinguk.co.uk

Hi All,
I have just uploaded the article that was published in this year's Wild Trout Trust Journal to my article page. Take a look here and let me know what you think! http://www.adventureflyfishinguk.co.uk/articles.php

Derrick

Going Back

www.adventureflyfishinguk.co.uk

What is the purpose of an angling club?

For me there are perhaps two:

1. To encourage a greater uptake of the sport through group participation be that competition, fishing events or  taster days.

2. Where the fishing requires access to private waters, to increase buying power for fishing rights by grouping together a number of anglers.

Hence a club should be able to make fishing that would otherwise be too expensive for many anglers individually more accessible to the many (and I suppose helps increase uptake of the sport)

Occasionally a club gets this thing wrong in my opinion.

I went home recently, back to the town in Wales that I grew up in, my folks still live there and I went home to spend some time with them and also I took the opportunity to explore the river on which I grew up. I haven't cast a line on this river for probably 18 years. When I say I grew up on the river, I spent almost all of my waking hours away from school on the banks of this river, fished it, fell in it (many times), climbed trees, built dens and generally just existed on it. Isn't it funny how the sorts of things we did when we were kids would today have our parents frowned upon, descended upon by social services or generally lambasted by society? That's a subject for another day perhaps.

The little river in question is relatively nutrient poor, with a head of small wild brown trout and migrant sea trout (or sewin, as they are called on this river) and a few salmon. As a kid I fished it with my Dad, he had permission to fish from the farmer that owned a couple of fields adjacent to the river, or you could buy an annual permit from him for a few quid - 5 to 15 pounds say and you would fish with worm or spinner generally, I seldom saw anybody fly fish as I grew up. You could start to fish at the tidal reaches of the river and work your way miles upstream quite happily. And the river was fished particularly after a spate when there was a good chance of a sewin.

Now the fishing rights are owned by a fishing club. The club in question is based approximately 20miles away and in addition to this stretch has over 12 miles of salmon and sewin fishing on the famous West Wales rivers of the Towy and the Teifi. Most UK game anglers will have heard of these rivers and the membership and day ticket costs are extremely reasonable to access these rivers where each year sewin well in to double figures (and occasionally approaching 20lb) are caught. But to fish 1.5miles of my little river, located well away from these other rivers, it seems a bit at odds.

And for this little bit of river I feel this club has, in my opinion, got it wrong. By acquiring (it is a recent acquisition) this fishing, different in nature to the other fishing they hold, some distance from the rest of the fishing, there is a strong possibility that in the area of this little river they are failing in purpose one. The membership and day ticket price points are correct - if you intend to fish these famous rivers - but it is completely wrong if you purely intend to fish this little river.

It would be really interesting to know how many people fished it since it fell in to angling club control compared to when it was available through local arrangement. The day I visited it felt that it had been largely ignored for a while. Overgrown and litter strewn, my little river didn't look well. I know this club does some habitat improvement and conservation work, I wonder where 1.5 miles of this little river sits on their list of work priorities.

As a rule anglers care for their environment, less anglers can mean less care and also less pairs of eyes watching the water. I found a large segment of gill net, abandoned and tangled now, but evidence that in the absence of others poachers move in.

 A small piece of the gill net I found.

I fished for a few hours with my Dad, the fishing was slow but it was nice to work upstream, reminiscing about previous fish caught and lost, fishing friends and old times. I think what worries me the most about the whole thing is that Dad and I talked afterwards and wondered how, if we were both 30 years younger, he would have managed to fish the way he used to and how he could have given me the sort of introduction to the sport that set me on my way. That worries me...

The first for a long, long time. The highlight of a difficult day.

Perhaps I am boring, but...

www.adventureflyfishinguk.co.uk

That's all I want is plain old boring normality, nothing exciting, spectacular and certainly not record breaking, just middle of the road, standard.

What am I talking about? The weather of course.

The last couple of years we seem to have lurched from one extraordinary weather event to the next, from record dry springs, to the wettest summer on record, to the coldest March and so on. Now I would like some normal stuff please, not overly warm, unseasonably cold, spectacularly wet or remarkably dry, nothing to bother the record books or to excite the statisticians - normal. If there is such a thing any more...

Talking of cold, here are a couple of photos sent to me by my mate in Iceland a couple of weeks ago, the spring creeping in to the Highlands:

See the bridge? There is a river under there, honest. I know because last year I caught fish underneath it.

This is a photo of a river I am set to explore this year just emerging from underneath the ice. We hope to find rising brown trout and possibly some char here in less than 3 months time. I hope it warms up a bit before I get there.

Hurry up...and wait.

www.adventureflyfishinguk.co.uk

I mentioned that it had been a long closed season, I am not sure I have awaited the start of the season with so much eagerness as I have this one. And so it was with some disappointment that I opened the curtains on the 15th, the first day of our trout season in Devon to be faced with grey skies, high winds and heavy rain. Washout.

That didn't stop me having a bit of a wander about though and for a while the sun even came out.

The river was high and in spate, but nowhere near as high as it had been that winter. My dogs are sat at least 6 feet higher than the flooded river and you can see that the floodwater had been over the top of the wire fence.

It is approaching that time of year when if you are a drake mallard it pays to be looking at your best.

The last of the snowdrops, those that hadn't been flattened by the wind and the rain.

So good as always to be out and about on the river, but for fishing I will just have to wait...

Derrick

Warm and Tingly

www.adventureflyfishinguk.co.uk

It has been a long, long closed season, it is fair to say I haven't enjoyed it much. Now that the new fishing season approaches I thought I would write a few words about what I have been up to.

Since my last correspondence I am pleased to report that I have become a Westcountry Angling Passport Ambassador, I am proud to be associated with the Westcountry Rivers Trust, a charity close to my heart and over the coming months I will be writing more, helping with some of their excellent habitat work and generally doing all I can to cajole everybody to use the Angling Passport scheme to access some super fishing and support this excellent cause.

A perfect example of the sort of good that can be done through this scheme is the new beat on the River Mole. The Garramarsh Farm Beat of the river Mole has entered the scheme this year. I know the beat well, largely underfished, the stretch had been allowed to become overgrown. To fish the stream in the summer was to fish in almost complete darkness, the stretch was completely overgrown, the river shrouded in a dense cloak of  sycamore and hazel, largely impermeable to light or anglers. With no light there was very few insects and without insects there would be very few feeding fish.

And so two weeks ago, with the season approaching, a Westcountry Rivers Trust contractor backed up by a volunteer working party descended on the beat, tooled up with power tools, hand saws and stacks of enthusiasm (not to mention tea and cake). And this is the best bit, everything we needed to do to improve access to the beat for visiting anglers served also to improve the habitat for fish and fauna - let me show you:  

 You can see how overgrown the beat is, obviously it is the end of the winter, give it a few weeks and you would not be able to see the river through the leaves. Without light this bit of the river will be largely barren of insects and their larvae. And so Gerald the contractor (and expert fisherman himself) fires up the chainsaw.

   Aided by the volunteer working party (here Dave Chapman the WRT Angling Development Manager) huge amounts of hazel is coppiced and the debris removed from the river.

Let there be light.

Removing trees serves to open up access to the river for visiting anglers and also lets light in to the river to encourage a more diverse population of flora and fauna and hopefully some lovely insects for the trout to feast on. Of course it is important not to get carried away, tempting though it is to trim every possible fly snagging hazard, shade is vital. Current scientific advice is that approximately 60% shading is perfect to protect the river water from becoming too warm and so restraint is important.

But it is not just about cutting trees out, here you see Gerald has selected some overhanging branches and instead of cutting them out he makes a cut part of the way through each limb, bends and secures the limbs along the river bank.

The idea is that these limbs will continue to grow in much the same way as a traditionally laid hedge does to produce limbs and leaves from these stems. The result would be perfect habitat for fish fry and insects, a great addition which will also serve to add to the productivity of the beat. As if this is not enough of an incentive to take every opportunity to add this kind of feature there is another benefit. This bankside growth will act as a buffer during spates, reducing the energy with which the water hits the banks and so reduces riverbank erosion. Less erosion = less silting of the gravels = more habitat available for fish to make their redds.

And so a days work, some good company with likeminded people, a new beat to fish and the warm, smug satisfaction that you have managed to do some good for the habitat we treasure. Happy days.

Derrick

Jet streams and fish dreams

www.adventureflyfishinguk.co.uk

The dust settled slowly as the growl of the big 4x4 gradually faded into the distance to be replaced by...nothing, complete silence. This was the start of my latest fishing adventure and Steinar, the driver of the rapidly disappearing vehicle would be the last person I would see for nearly a week. I had eagerly anticipated this moment for many months and now that it was here it felt a little strange, excitement mixed with a little apprehension and a hint of 'what the hell am I doing here' scepticism.

'Here' was Iceland, a popular fishing holiday destination, but not this bit, not this way. At my feet lay approximately 35 kilos of kit, food, clothes, survival gear and fishing gear, for the next 9 days my home was to be the remote Highlands of Iceland and I was going to do it the hard way - no guides, no lodges, no creature comforts, just me, surviving and fishing. What definitely wasn't what I had expected, was the weather.  Iceland was in the grips of a drought, the exact opposite to what we had been seeing in the UK up to this point of the summer. apparently this was something to do with the Jet Stream which had been stuck to the south of where it should be giving us record rainfall and Iceland the blue skies and warm sunshine that I felt as I began my slow journey deeper into the Highlands and the first river destination. More about this jet stream thing later.    

Not really typical Icelandic weather, the glacier bathed in warm sunshine. 

The first few days passed in a flash as I quickly settled in to a routine, pitching somewhere in the middle of the river course and spending a day searching downstream of that point and a day upstream, before moving on to the next one. The rivers were roughly the same width as what I am used in Devon but what was interesting was how they changed in nature along their course. In the UK many rivers start in the mountains as fast, narrow, rocky streams and gradually become wider and slower as they wind their way to the estuary. Here it was the opposite the rivers were born in the high plateaus, relatively flat land, the waters are wide, slow and relatively featureless, the riverbanks soft and muddy. As the streams get towards the point were they meet the glacial river they fall off the plateau, steeper ground, faster water, with pools, pockets and glides. 

A typical lower stretch of highland river, pools, pockets and glides.

The fishing was good, the fish were superb. There was an abundance of fly life, buzzers and sedge in the main, but very few rising fish. Nevertheless dry flies worked well, very well, with fish upto 5 pounds or so coming to delicately sip klinkhammers and sedge imitations. And boy did they fight, I saw my backing knot rattle through the tip ring on a daily basis and frequently had to chase running fish up or downstream. As I ventured upstream away from the fast moving water the fishing became less inspiring, long reaches of slow moving shallow water with no sign of fish. Then out of nowhere I would discover a massive boulder, placed midstream by some massive forces years ago. Surrounding the boulder would be deep blue water where the stream has scoured away the riverbed, habitat the absolutely screamed 'FISH'. A streamer placed upstream, allowed to sink and worked quickly so that it enters this blue water produced many fish. Aggressive chases and arm wrenching takes all very visible in the clear water. And so I walked along the rivers looking for these features, racking up perhaps 8-10miles per day.

Jonesy attempts the one handed fish cuddle photograph

Chewed up streamer.

Here comes the rain.

 All the while the cloud gradually built, I was getting hit by frequent heavy showers, at least you 

could see them coming across the flat tundra. As I worked my way South I had to cross two glacial rivers, very different beasts to what I was used to. A milky blue coloured water, heavy with tiny rock particles from the mechanical grinding of the bedrock, these rivers move fast and strong. Luckily I had arranged a vehicle to cross these rivers, prior to that the only contact with the human race had been when I turned my phone on once a day to send updates home and suck in any text messages. Tom, the driver warned me of an impending storm. It turns out that two days after I left the UK so did the jet stream, heading straight for Iceland, take a look at what the BBC had to say about it all Here . 

Tom, my saviour across the glacial river and first human contact for days

Hope it doesn't get any deeper...

Now I am at 800m, in between two glaciers, with (as you can see) a storm in bound, finding somewhere out of the wind to pitch my tent is difficult when the area is billiard table flat. Up until now I had been pitching within the confines of the riverbed, right beside the river, to get the shelter but now with lots of rain forecast that may not be wise. For a while things got uncomfortable. After a rough night I made my way downstream, hoping to find some shelter where the gradient increased. It was here I met the Iceland Mountain Rescue volunteers that were out patrolling the track that runs through the middle of the Highlands warning anybody they found of worsening weather, they suggested perhaps an alternative accommodation for the approaching night.

Upper stretch of a highland river, shallow and slow. No chance of any shelter from the impending storm.

I didn't need asking twice. That night as I cowered in a remote Highland shelter the winds reached 60mph, the same rescue organisation that advised me to leave, rescued more than 20 people that night. And so my Iceland fishing adventure came to a premature end, I was just grateful that the storm hit two days from the end and not right at the start. So 6 days self sufficient in the highlands, fishing numerous rivers, catching great fish in an amazing environment, Iceland Adventure done.

So where next...?