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| John with one on the Dry |
I can honestly say that not only did April throw just about everything at us it could, in the weather spectrum, it also did it on a regular basis and often all in one day too. Just when you thought it was about to warm up it turned extremely cold again, with hail stones, snow, rain, and a bit of sunshine thrown in for good measure. These constantly fluctuating temperatures really contributed to slowing the trout fishing down, encouraging the very sparse hatches we experienced in March to continue into April, a month that has historically seen some very good trout fishing on the Eden.
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| Allan on the Goldhead |
What is encouraging though, is that towards the end of the month we saw the beginnings of a little more interest in the dry fly, not all the time, but on more occasions than we have seen of late, which is always a good indicator of a change on the horizon. So with May looming and temperatures set to rise, (hopefully more consistently) we should be looking forward to a little more insect life and subsequently a bit more surface activity for some of that excellent dry fly and spider fishing we have come to look forward to at this time of year.
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| Caught on Camera in the Air |
As mentioned above, the very sparse hatches we encountered throughout April consisted of: the odd March Brown, a scattering of intermittent Large Dark Olives, a few Large Stoneflies and a small amount of caddis, (which only started to appear around the third week of April). However the significant observation here is that fly numbers were negligible in comparison to what we have experienced in previous years, so lets hope May temperatures trigger an increase in this area.
Despite the slow start to the trout season, it's not all been dour fishing though, as we have been picking away at them day by day, with some of the anglers I have had out with me certainly having some degree of success, and to catch a few fish in these difficult conditions can be very satisfying indeed as you can see from the accompanying pictures.
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| Tony adjusting the drag (Spiders) |
The majority of anglers I have had out thus far have either come along for tuition, trout fishing, or both, but I have to say, the die hard salmon anglers who continue to visit the river annually, for their spring fishing fix, are steadily increasing their catches, with good numbers of fish being caught and returned to the river on many of the beats, both lower down and higher up the system, many of the beat return books are testament to this, with some anglers catching several fish to their own rod and many double figure fish turning up on the return sheets. Good to see!
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| Safe in the Net |
Finally, possibly in anticipation of a better Month, I am set to be very busy in May with only a few remaining available dates in my diary, so here's hoping that May doesn't let us down and therefore continues to be the productive Month we have all become accustomed to in previous years. Let's go fishing!
