A hatch and some dry fly action

I decided to have a few hours on the river today and headed out mid morning hoping to catch a hatch of flies around lunchtime. The weather was meant to be overcast with cloud which it was when I left, however on reaching the river the sun was high in the sky, there was hardly a cloud and the river was very low & gin clear, not what the BBC weather told me it would be like.

I sat by the river watching out for any fly activity and sure enough about 40 minutes after I had sat down the odd fly started to hatch and then some more and so on.

View from my vantage point across the river & up the Dale.










It didn't take long for fish to start to rise to the hatching olives, but as I soon found out it wasn't trout which were rising to the flies but small grayling and I couldn't get any trout for the masses of small grayling taking the hatching flies.

After 20 or so casts and around 12 small grayling landed and returned I moved downstream out of the way of the grayling which although were great to see and fighting fit this wasnt what I had come for.

As I walked downstream it was nice to see the marigolds out in full bloom along the riverbank.

The hatch was still happening and I observed an area just at the tail of a pool where one fish was coming up quite frequent for the flies, so I maneuvered below him along the riverbank and cast back upstream to where he was rising and first cast across up he came and took my imitation.

A lovely wild fish and beautifully marked, and as always returned to fight another day.













I walked on downstream where I came across all the sand-martins taking full advantage of the bank erosion which had happened over the winter.

Nice to see them back along the river again. There was a lot of par moving around, but nothing of any size. I only saw one other decent fish which wasn't interested in any fly I threw across it, as I walked to the bottom of the stretch before turning around and walking back upstream to a now silent river as the hatch was over and the fish were no longer rising.
A couple of hours well spent along the river with a lovely fish and some sit downs along the way to take in the nature around me.