Midges and Trout

Last night I was asked if I could take a new member of our club onto the Upper reaches of our beat to introduce him to the water which I hastily agreed to, I threw the kit in the car & was off, forgetting 2 vital items of equipment which I later regretted, one was my camera & the second was insect repellent.

We arrived on the river to find it very dirty and rising, there must have been a good down pour higher up in the Dales which was filtering down through the system, after around an hour of sitting and watching we saw the odd smaller fish rise so started off with dry flies which raised & got a fish almost instantaneously, nothing of any great size, around the half pound mark if I had to guess.

My partner for the evening raised another fish and unfortunately released it at range, but we were pessimistic that more would follow, as the night wore on the midges began to prey on us until at one point it felt we were being eaten alive, so decided to head back upstream to where we had started.

The river was still rising and nothing was rising any longer although there was a stunning hatch of large yellow Mayflies on the water, we both switched to a small beaded streamer which we fished back upstream and both of us took fish from places I didn't expect to catch anything. We ended the night with 7 fish between the 2 of us and a few lost at range, not a bad evening for something off the cuff and it just shows you need to fish to the conditions.  Insect repellent is now in my jacket for next time.