Perusing The Menu

**Westcountry** · 05-11-2011, 02:48 AM

Would Mr Trout care to choose something from the spring menu?

May be some cased caddis larvae, a good mouthfull if a little crunchy. Annoying habit of hiding under stones so not so easy to pick off.

Or possibly some caseless caddis, much less gritty and easier to find.

How about a stonefly nymph. Hiding under stones and crawling out onto dry land to hatch makes it a less than easy target outside of spate conditions.

The traditional favourite - a collection of olive nymphs. A quick grub about in the weeds should turn up a few between hatches.

A good big stone clinger nymph - this one not far off an inch long (including the tails).

Shrimp, a highly reccommended meaty mouthful.

Available for a few weeks only - THE mayfly nymph.

All the above found in three minutes sampling of a small Exmoor river. Our best sample yet with hundreds of olive nymphs, stonefly nymph and shrimp. Also found in the sample net were one mature bullhead, dozens of bullhead fry (all around half an inch long,a first for me) and one trout fry.

Of course if Mr Trout is struggling to find any of the above he can have one of these...

A fly swap fly from another forum, it proved to be the killing fly on the day.

The fishing was better than expected considering the weather.
Here comes another thunder storm, will it miss us? (Note my mate Bill using that favourite old tactic - stand on a high bank in full view of the fish)

No!

But between the storms (which, being the first rain in living memory in Somerset, had zero effect on the river level or colour) we picked up twenty or so Exmoor tiddlers from 6 to 10 inches.

Andy

**Honda450** · 05-11-2011, 05:11 AM

The shots of the fly life are great, exellent trip.

**ksbioteacher** · 05-11-2011, 09:43 AM

Very nice. I enjoyed the menu approach. So here is a question. I assume that you sampled the aquatic macroinverts to inform you fly choice. Most of the time I sample I get something like you did---gobs of everything. I haven't continued to sample for that reason. Seems to be too much data without a lot of trends. If you spent the time to sample the insect life then you must have a purpose. Is it part of the overall experience or do you put the data to work? Just curious. As a point of information, though I have some background in aquatic biology, I don't generally sample and for the most part rely on changing fly size more than swapping out the 4 or 5 flies that I use 95% of the time.

**adam** · 05-11-2011, 10:35 AM

Top shelf post.

Fly fishing.

**Westcountry** · 05-12-2011, 02:28 AM

Originally Posted by ksbioteacher

Very nice. I enjoyed the menu approach. So here is a question. I assume that you sampled the aquatic macroinverts to inform you fly choice. Most of the time I sample I get something like you did---gobs of everything. I haven't continued to sample for that reason. Seems to be too much data without a lot of trends. If you spent the time to sample the insect life then you must have a purpose. Is it part of the overall experience or do you put the data to work? Just curious. As a point of information, though I have some background in aquatic biology, I don't generally sample and for the most part rely on changing fly size more than swapping out the 4 or 5 flies that I use 95% of the time.

Hi,
We do it to keep an eye on water quality. Three minutes of kicking about in the gravel and weeds, catch the dislodged bugs in a net, empty them into a tray and count the different groups (cased caddis, caseless caddis, shrimp etc). Any sudden drop the abundance of something points to a problem. Along with other club members we cover about 15 sites across the catchment. All the results get sent off here http://www.riverflies.org/ so there is a growing bank of information from many rivers across the country. So far we have not found any problems:)
My fly choice on the day is influenced by what I see fluttering around on the stream not what we find in the sample net;)

Andy

**ksbioteacher** · 05-12-2011, 06:30 AM

Ahhh. Now that is an excellent idea. While I have participated in and actually started some stream monitoring student groups I have not heard of a similar effort, here. I imagine that local chapters of the big flyfishing organizations might very well have something like riverflies in place but if not perhaps they should. Great citizen science.....

BW

**adam** · 05-12-2011, 08:57 AM

I love science, but I enjoy a great mystery.

I have tubed a few trouts (stomach pump) in the past. Now I wish I hadn't but it provided a lot of what wanted to know...

Seining and a record of sampling is good work, does many things.

Still enjoying your post...

**edeltrouts** · 05-13-2011, 02:26 AM

The stream seems to be a First-Class-Restaurant for trout.
Havn't seen so much indicator species for good water quality on one place.
There should be some big trout in that water!?
Great looking place for small stream fishing.

Thomas

**Westcountry** · 05-13-2011, 02:49 AM

Originally Posted by edeltrouts

There should be some big trout in that water!?

If only! The water produces lots of small fat trout, up to around 12 inches. Reading the old books and hotel records it is clear that the fish have always been tiddlers. There is a chapter in Negley Farson's Going Fishing about the fishing on these waters and he thought a half pounder was a good one.
Oddly the few grayling that are present get very much biger than the trout, up to 2lb, but they are few and far between. There are probably about 100 trout to every grayling.

Andy