HI,
I've been around here a while but never mentioned my flyfishing inclinations. Anyway, there are certain times of year when I finish fishing at dusk, throw the soggy waders into the car (next to the stringed instruments) and head off for the session. Quite a satisfying way to end a day. There are many tunes that celebrate that bent. Flyfishing Reel, Salmon tailing up the River, Hand me down the Tackle- etc. etc. Though I'm from the Boston area, it's interesting to note that in Ireland the trout don't start biting until mid day. Is that great or what? Nice of them to not wake you too early after a night of good craic in the pub. Most places in North Amerikay demand a 4:00 am start, and the bite is over by 8:00 am.
Anyway, I've always felt some weird connection between the 2 activities.
Saltcast
Just south of you - I've caught my nicest native brookies at dusk from Oct til the end of the season, light rain & the colder the better. any pinkish streamer works fine. I'm a night owl, getting up at 4am to catch fish just takes all the fun out of it for me.
That is an ideal day, fly-fishing until dark and then music. There's often a bite in the early morning, but you can often find willing fish at other times, especially in Puget Sound. The only downside to fishing all day is my hands getting too sore to fret a note, but there's always the harmonica.
I knew an old flute player Leslie Bingham from Co, Down,, done fly-fishing at a lot of the Fleadhs around Ireland, esp- in the sligo area- And at Rosscommon Fleadh's he be up early fishing the river Boyle,and then stopped just in time for the morning session..
I done abit of fly-fishing myself but never at Fleadh's,,, Was alway's to Hung-over then.. lol.
jim,,,
I leave both faith and pride
To young upstanding men
Climbing the mountain-side,
That under bursting dawn
They may drop a fly;
Being of that metal made
Till it was broken by
This sedentary trade.
Don't worry, I'm sure somebody will come along soon, to "lower the tone"...
Not to intrude on your meditative moment, but in the interest of efficiency how do you feel about setting off a percussive charge under the surface and then collecting the floating fish? Or are you not fans of percussion in general?
StringTheory, I think your method is more concussive than percussive.
There is no doubt great tranquility and satisfaction obtained from standing in or near babbling brooks, but I believe the journey begins at the fishmongers', after cleaning and boning has occurred.
The pure sport of enticing suspicious trout with barbless hooks and then returning them lovingly to their environment is lost on me, I fear.
A popular fishermans' Tshirt slogan in these parts is
"FILLET AND RELEASE"
< The pure sport of enticing suspicious trout with barbless hooks and then returning them lovingly to their environment is lost on me, I fear.>
Not on me, that's the sport of it I Preferred.. It's the Difference of
listening to Brendan McGlinchey playing his Reel- '' Splendid Isolation '' Or,, Just banging a big drum,,, lol.
jim,,,
Are you serious, not until mid-day -- That's convenient, but interesting. Is it a lazy hatch, or what? I've done the whole up at dawn bit on the US East coast several times with mixed results (Ashe, Wilkes, Watauga counties NC). I say mid-day is interesting because my biggest fish for that type of fishing were a brown and a rainbow, and both taken mid-day, quite overcast, and by lobbing wet flies through turbid water. You can't coax the brookies out in the mud, though.
On the other hand, surf fishing the beaches in Florida is a strictly dusk-till-dawn thing. It's hardly a session following a night like that, but I frequently went for a pint at 10AM after packing it in.
When I was a boy our family went to Ireland on holiday. Dad, my brother and I often fly-fished but Dad really wanted to fish in Ireland. All the way across he was banging on about how great it was going to be fishing the mighty Blackwater and on th second day he rallied us all and of we went. Mum, bruv and I sat on the bank rolling our eyes and moaning about what a great holiday this was going to be and he probably won't catch anything when, on his second cast he landed a five-pound salmon. A real beauty. That shut us up. We ate the fish (mmm!) and he never caught another for the next two weeks.
I don't know of any good plaices to go fishing on the way to my regular session, though I've done a lot of sole searching about it. I'm fin-ished bothering with it and won't be carping on about it anymore -- just going to enjoy the tunas down at the pub.
Sugarfoot Jack -
< he never caught another for the next two weeks.> Just irish Luck, there's a lot of Angler's over here wished that could have happened to them... Well Done though !
I live close to the river Itchen on the south coast of England –a beautiful chalk stream and home of fly fishing-Skews etc; but you need deep pockets to fish it. It would be cheaper for me to fly to Scotland and have a loch to myself for a week than it is to fish a river 15 minutes walk away. There is one free stretch on the Itchen under the M3 and if you can put up with the roar of the traffic and the stink of urine, there are fish. Does n’t inspire poetry though.
I'm not sure that fish urinate, but I'm pretty damned certain they don't drive.
I was on a little bridge in Scotland watching a fisherman sitting on a flat rock directly below when the biggest salmon I've ever seen leaped out of the water and landed directly behind him. He couldn't hear it flapping about because of the roar of the water, and he couldn't make out what I was shouting from above (it's hard to shout and laugh at the same time}. Eventually he must have heard me and turned to where I was pointing. He dropped his rod in his haste to grab the fish just as it flapped off the rock back into the river.
No rod, no fish. Priceless!
Fly-fishing is like playing ITM in that a lot of it's a knack of the wrist. I did a lot of fly-fishing earlier in life. The two things also have in common that they're utterly addictive.
If llig did set out to try fly-fishing, the Water of Leith in Edinburgh is in fact a trout stream and probably not too expensive to fish - there might even be free stretches. But if there is more than a certain amount of sewage effluent in a river, the trout - though able to live in it - won't taste very nice. That may or may not apply to the WoL.
I thought I was the only one to combine the two! I'm going to organise the ideal holiday at some point, fly fishing on Lough Corrib, and pack the banjo to try a couple of sessions. They're two great hobbies perfectly suited to a stint in Ireland. I must confess I'm doing better with the fly rod than the banjo.......
PS Have tried the berry-tied-to-a-thread-by-flickering-starlight method; no trout, so far. At night, the local trout are too busy tearing into crayfish on the lake bottom to take an interest in some crummy thing like a berry, however provocatively offered above them. A flashlight pointed down in to the depths always revealed crayfish body parts; plenty of trout too.
A game-keeper once told me that he used to open the stomach of the first fish he caught to see what it was feeding on, then use that as bait. Very often he would be hauling them in using berries while his co-fishers caught nothing.
That's what he told me.
I tried tickling trout but they just laughed.
I've caught carp (exotic invasive species..) in South Florida canals by throwing a berry fly in front of them as they go along sucking up floating ficus berries. The "fly" is really just a bit of cork with some enamel on the outside.
They're not much for a fight, though, just a lot of pulling you into the backing.
Opening a fish's stomach in-situ seems like a lot of work for matching a hatch (not to mention being illegal by most regulations). Just look for whatever appears to be the prominent food source on that part of the water. If you can't see it or feel it then it might be in the water or there might not be many fish around there. But I've done this stomach trick with saltwiter many times and it is helpful in certain contexts. Pelagic species eat all sorts of interesting things -- anything that's the right size and in the right place, essentially.
I don't know about berries - they're hardly normal trout food. I suppose if you threaded a very small rowan berry (e.g.) onto a hook and jigged it about like a lure, you might catch the odd suicide case.
trout rising at mid-day is a myth. it depends on the stretch of water you fish. where i fish i have caught rising trout on dry flies as early as 8am at the start of the season. never went to a session after fishing, but have landed in the pub after catching nothing as there is one across from where i fish.
I've never seen a brook trout, though in recent years I think they've been stocked more often in reservoirs in the UK. Maybe they have hitherto proved harder to rear in hatcheries than rainbow trout, which have been farmed and stocked in huge numbers in the UK for a long time now. (For all that, there are not many UK streams where rainbow trout actually breed.)
I don't think I have ever combined fly-fishing with sessioning. Two hazards might lie in wait:
(1) You go to a hum-dinger of a session after a successful spell by the waterside. Hours later, in the humid heat of the pub, the fish start hum-dinging as well. Not good!
(2) You stagger out of a session to try for sea-trout late at night. Robbed of vision and sense by drink and music you fall into a pitch-black abyss with sharp rocks at the bottom, with or without water above them. Your rod snaps, your fiddle sails downstream into the night / your box crashes into a twenty-foot pool, sinks, and begins to rust. Not good!
They're notoriously fickle. Water's got to be very cold throughout the year and quite clean. And I've been told they take the impact of taking a hook much worse than browns and rainbows. But they're a gem of a fish.
Brook trout or "brookies" are native to eastern north america .Of course they have spread thru stocking programs etc. They stock them along the east still and if you are lucky you might find a few natives. They need very clean cold water as mentioned before and that is rarer these days with all the development.
Brown trout are not native to the US at all but were introduced and thrive well here. Some ol timers refer to browns as "Germans" or "German Browns". The lore is that the original stock of browns brought to the states came from Germany. Rainbow trout are native to the waters that drain west of the rockies. They have also thrived well all over the east (in stocking programs and the odd hold over). It seems in Ireland there are native browns all over the countryside. You are so lucky to have that available. I'm sure there are pressures on them as well.
A good fishery can bring in lots of eco friendly dollars to any region.One study showed that a Salmon caught on a rod brings in ~10x the money to a region than to catch it in a net.
Ok heres the ITM portion of my post: I played my regular session last night. It was fun, we had a new piper in town, good man (Joey).
I don't know if brookies have ever been deliberately released in UK rivers. The laws governing this are probably rather strict - there might / might have been fears that they would bring disease to native salmonids or compete with them. If they are spring spawners (I don't know), then out-of-condition brookies might insist on getting caught by anglers who are after brownies in the spring and early summer.
And in a warm summer, anyway, most UK rivers are liable to warm up, maybe too much for brook trout. Only a minority come from deep springs under chalk or limestone which produce water of a constant low temperature and also a relatively constant flow.
Rainbows in England? Are they a European native, or an import? Don't suppose you guys over there have cut-throats and goldens too, by any chance? With regard to sessioning after an evening's fishing, well there would be complications for those of us who eschew waders. The cold causes this fisherman's knee caps to spasm uncontrollably for the next few hours. This phenomenon is not easy to conceal. Other sessioners might get upset by the spectacle.
Would the other sessioners be amenable to the heavy perfume of mosquito repellent, among other powerfully aromatic possibilities? Suppose you were dumb enough to try fishing while the water's too warm, and there's a good algal bloom on. The folks at the bar would love you for that.
Yes, there are those wonderful establishments which cater exclusively to fishermen; where a happy clientele smells like so many wet dogs, and nobody gives a damn. The notion of Irish music there is a harder sell than you'd think. Irish music in E California is un-American.
No, AQ, rainbows are not native to the UK or Europe. However, the Shasta variety has proved easy to farm and is released in many waters - mainly reservoirs, but some rivers too. But the stocks have to be maintained from farms, as very largely they don't breed in UK waters. The small Derbyshire Wye (river) is known in fly-fishing circles for having almost uniquely a breeding population - it's a limestone river of the sort I mentioned in a post above.
Shastas in rivers tend to disappear downstream from the stretch they've been put in, possibly out of some sea-going instinct. But as far as I know they're not quite the same thing as the sea-going cutthroats. I don't know if any of these have actually been released or caught in Britain. I assume (I may be wrong) that the Shasta and the cutthroat are two strains of the same species, as are the brown trout and the sea trout over here.
Lake Shasta isn't some abstract place name for some of us. Nice to learn Californian fish are making a go of it in England. The change in diet must not have been too radical. Bet they miss the nightly crawdad feasts.
Flyfishing on the way to the session
Flyfishing on the way to the session
HI,
I've been around here a while but never mentioned my flyfishing inclinations. Anyway, there are certain times of year when I finish fishing at dusk, throw the soggy waders into the car (next to the stringed instruments) and head off for the session. Quite a satisfying way to end a day. There are many tunes that celebrate that bent. Flyfishing Reel, Salmon tailing up the River, Hand me down the Tackle- etc. etc. Though I'm from the Boston area, it's interesting to note that in Ireland the trout don't start biting until mid day. Is that great or what? Nice of them to not wake you too early after a night of good craic in the pub. Most places in North Amerikay demand a 4:00 am start, and the bite is over by 8:00 am.
Anyway, I've always felt some weird connection between the 2 activities.
Saltcast
# Posted on November 1st 2010 by saltcast
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
Just south of you - I've caught my nicest native brookies at dusk from Oct til the end of the season, light rain & the colder the better. any pinkish streamer works fine. I'm a night owl, getting up at 4am to catch fish just takes all the fun out of it for me.
# Posted on November 1st 2010 by B Rad
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
I've always wanted to try fly fishing.
# Posted on November 1st 2010 by ...
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
That is an ideal day, fly-fishing until dark and then music. There's often a bite in the early morning, but you can often find willing fish at other times, especially in Puget Sound. The only downside to fishing all day is my hands getting too sore to fret a note, but there's always the harmonica.
# Posted on November 1st 2010 by TaoCat
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
I knew an old flute player Leslie Bingham from Co, Down,, done fly-fishing at a lot of the Fleadhs around Ireland, esp- in the sligo area- And at Rosscommon Fleadh's he be up early fishing the river Boyle,and then stopped just in time for the morning session..
I done abit of fly-fishing myself but never at Fleadh's,,, Was alway's to Hung-over then.. lol.
jim,,,
# Posted on November 1st 2010 by FIDDLE4
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
I just spray 'em meself.
# Posted on November 1st 2010 by mcknowall
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
saltcast, I think Ireland's own W. B. Yeats would understand.
http://thequietpool.blogspot.com/2009/05/fly-fishing-poetry-and-quotes.html
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by John Galt
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
And this Yeats excerpt is a favorite of mine:
I leave both faith and pride
To young upstanding men
Climbing the mountain-side,
That under bursting dawn
They may drop a fly;
Being of that metal made
Till it was broken by
This sedentary trade.
Don't worry, I'm sure somebody will come along soon, to "lower the tone"...
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by John Galt
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
Not to intrude on your meditative moment, but in the interest of efficiency how do you feel about setting off a percussive charge under the surface and then collecting the floating fish? Or are you not fans of percussion in general?
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by StringTheory
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
Ah. And there you go! Back to our regular programming....
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by John Galt
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
StringTheory, I think your method is more concussive than percussive.
There is no doubt great tranquility and satisfaction obtained from standing in or near babbling brooks, but I believe the journey begins at the fishmongers', after cleaning and boning has occurred.
The pure sport of enticing suspicious trout with barbless hooks and then returning them lovingly to their environment is lost on me, I fear.
A popular fishermans' Tshirt slogan in these parts is
"FILLET AND RELEASE"
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by oldstrings
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
< The pure sport of enticing suspicious trout with barbless hooks and then returning them lovingly to their environment is lost on me, I fear.>
Not on me, that's the sport of it I Preferred.. It's the Difference of
listening to Brendan McGlinchey playing his Reel- '' Splendid Isolation '' Or,, Just banging a big drum,,, lol.
jim,,,
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by FIDDLE4
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
Don't forget The Musical Priest. I won't mention scales...
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by gam
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
Or The Golden Rod , before this slippery post just SLIDE's away downstream - : )
http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/6518
jim,,,
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by FIDDLE4
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
Are you serious, not until mid-day -- That's convenient, but interesting. Is it a lazy hatch, or what? I've done the whole up at dawn bit on the US East coast several times with mixed results (Ashe, Wilkes, Watauga counties NC). I say mid-day is interesting because my biggest fish for that type of fishing were a brown and a rainbow, and both taken mid-day, quite overcast, and by lobbing wet flies through turbid water. You can't coax the brookies out in the mud, though.
On the other hand, surf fishing the beaches in Florida is a strictly dusk-till-dawn thing. It's hardly a session following a night like that, but I frequently went for a pint at 10AM after packing it in.
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by gravelwalks
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
When I was a boy our family went to Ireland on holiday. Dad, my brother and I often fly-fished but Dad really wanted to fish in Ireland. All the way across he was banging on about how great it was going to be fishing the mighty Blackwater and on th second day he rallied us all and of we went. Mum, bruv and I sat on the bank rolling our eyes and moaning about what a great holiday this was going to be and he probably won't catch anything when, on his second cast he landed a five-pound salmon. A real beauty. That shut us up. We ate the fish (mmm!) and he never caught another for the next two weeks.
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by Sugarfoot Jack
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
I don't know of any good plaices to go fishing on the way to my regular session, though I've done a lot of sole searching about it. I'm fin-ished bothering with it and won't be carping on about it anymore -- just going to enjoy the tunas down at the pub.
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
Sugarfoot Jack -
< he never caught another for the next two weeks.> Just irish Luck, there's a lot of Angler's over here wished that could have happened to them... Well Done though !
jim,,,
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by FIDDLE4
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
I live close to the river Itchen on the south coast of England –a beautiful chalk stream and home of fly fishing-Skews etc; but you need deep pockets to fish it. It would be cheaper for me to fly to Scotland and have a loch to myself for a week than it is to fish a river 15 minutes walk away. There is one free stretch on the Itchen under the M3 and if you can put up with the roar of the traffic and the stink of urine, there are fish. Does n’t inspire poetry though.
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by Eòsaph
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
Good stuff all, especially the Yeats.
Season is all but over her now. So the trad playing will pick up even more.
saltcast
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by saltcast
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
I'm not sure that fish urinate, but I'm pretty damned certain they don't drive.
I was on a little bridge in Scotland watching a fisherman sitting on a flat rock directly below when the biggest salmon I've ever seen leaped out of the water and landed directly behind him. He couldn't hear it flapping about because of the roar of the water, and he couldn't make out what I was shouting from above (it's hard to shout and laugh at the same time}. Eventually he must have heard me and turned to where I was pointing. He dropped his rod in his haste to grab the fish just as it flapped off the rock back into the river.
No rod, no fish. Priceless!
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by gam
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
http://doniganmerritt.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/dscn3675.jpg
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by Eòsaph
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
haha
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by gam
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
Fly-fishing is like playing ITM in that a lot of it's a knack of the wrist. I did a lot of fly-fishing earlier in life. The two things also have in common that they're utterly addictive.
If llig did set out to try fly-fishing, the Water of Leith in Edinburgh is in fact a trout stream and probably not too expensive to fish - there might even be free stretches. But if there is more than a certain amount of sewage effluent in a river, the trout - though able to live in it - won't taste very nice. That may or may not apply to the WoL.
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by nicholas
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/313 is my favourite.
Anyone care to tell me how to make this a hyperlink? I can do it in word but it doesn't seem to work on here.
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by len
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
Just like magic it appears. How to reveal ones ignorance to the world.
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by len
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
I thought I was the only one to combine the two! I'm going to organise the ideal holiday at some point, fly fishing on Lough Corrib, and pack the banjo to try a couple of sessions. They're two great hobbies perfectly suited to a stint in Ireland. I must confess I'm doing better with the fly rod than the banjo.......
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by gilezzznik
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
Lovely thread guys! It would seem Irish trout kept earlier hours in Yeats' day.
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by Atahualpa Quigley
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
PS Have tried the berry-tied-to-a-thread-by-flickering-starlight method; no trout, so far. At night, the local trout are too busy tearing into crayfish on the lake bottom to take an interest in some crummy thing like a berry, however provocatively offered above them. A flashlight pointed down in to the depths always revealed crayfish body parts; plenty of trout too.
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by Atahualpa Quigley
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
A game-keeper once told me that he used to open the stomach of the first fish he caught to see what it was feeding on, then use that as bait. Very often he would be hauling them in using berries while his co-fishers caught nothing.
That's what he told me.
I tried tickling trout but they just laughed.
# Posted on November 2nd 2010 by gam
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
I've caught carp (exotic invasive species..) in South Florida canals by throwing a berry fly in front of them as they go along sucking up floating ficus berries. The "fly" is really just a bit of cork with some enamel on the outside.
They're not much for a fight, though, just a lot of pulling you into the backing.
Opening a fish's stomach in-situ seems like a lot of work for matching a hatch (not to mention being illegal by most regulations). Just look for whatever appears to be the prominent food source on that part of the water. If you can't see it or feel it then it might be in the water or there might not be many fish around there. But I've done this stomach trick with saltwiter many times and it is helpful in certain contexts. Pelagic species eat all sorts of interesting things -- anything that's the right size and in the right place, essentially.
# Posted on November 3rd 2010 by gravelwalks
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
I don't know about berries - they're hardly normal trout food. I suppose if you threaded a very small rowan berry (e.g.) onto a hook and jigged it about like a lure, you might catch the odd suicide case.
# Posted on November 3rd 2010 by nicholas
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
trout rising at mid-day is a myth. it depends on the stretch of water you fish. where i fish i have caught rising trout on dry flies as early as 8am at the start of the season. never went to a session after fishing, but have landed in the pub after catching nothing as there is one across from where i fish.
# Posted on November 3rd 2010 by James Morgan
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
The trout around here rise at about four o'clock and can usually be found in the pub by five getting a*rseholed.
# Posted on November 3rd 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
I've never seen a brook trout, though in recent years I think they've been stocked more often in reservoirs in the UK. Maybe they have hitherto proved harder to rear in hatcheries than rainbow trout, which have been farmed and stocked in huge numbers in the UK for a long time now. (For all that, there are not many UK streams where rainbow trout actually breed.)
I don't think I have ever combined fly-fishing with sessioning. Two hazards might lie in wait:
(1) You go to a hum-dinger of a session after a successful spell by the waterside. Hours later, in the humid heat of the pub, the fish start hum-dinging as well. Not good!
(2) You stagger out of a session to try for sea-trout late at night. Robbed of vision and sense by drink and music you fall into a pitch-black abyss with sharp rocks at the bottom, with or without water above them. Your rod snaps, your fiddle sails downstream into the night / your box crashes into a twenty-foot pool, sinks, and begins to rust. Not good!
# Posted on November 3rd 2010 by nicholas
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
They're notoriously fickle. Water's got to be very cold throughout the year and quite clean. And I've been told they take the impact of taking a hook much worse than browns and rainbows. But they're a gem of a fish.
# Posted on November 4th 2010 by gravelwalks
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
Brook trout or "brookies" are native to eastern north america .Of course they have spread thru stocking programs etc. They stock them along the east still and if you are lucky you might find a few natives. They need very clean cold water as mentioned before and that is rarer these days with all the development.
Brown trout are not native to the US at all but were introduced and thrive well here. Some ol timers refer to browns as "Germans" or "German Browns". The lore is that the original stock of browns brought to the states came from Germany. Rainbow trout are native to the waters that drain west of the rockies. They have also thrived well all over the east (in stocking programs and the odd hold over). It seems in Ireland there are native browns all over the countryside. You are so lucky to have that available. I'm sure there are pressures on them as well.
A good fishery can bring in lots of eco friendly dollars to any region.One study showed that a Salmon caught on a rod brings in ~10x the money to a region than to catch it in a net.
Ok heres the ITM portion of my post: I played my regular session last night. It was fun, we had a new piper in town, good man (Joey).
# Posted on November 4th 2010 by saltcast
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
I don't know if brookies have ever been deliberately released in UK rivers. The laws governing this are probably rather strict - there might / might have been fears that they would bring disease to native salmonids or compete with them. If they are spring spawners (I don't know), then out-of-condition brookies might insist on getting caught by anglers who are after brownies in the spring and early summer.
And in a warm summer, anyway, most UK rivers are liable to warm up, maybe too much for brook trout. Only a minority come from deep springs under chalk or limestone which produce water of a constant low temperature and also a relatively constant flow.
# Posted on November 4th 2010 by nicholas
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
Rainbows in England? Are they a European native, or an import? Don't suppose you guys over there have cut-throats and goldens too, by any chance? With regard to sessioning after an evening's fishing, well there would be complications for those of us who eschew waders. The cold causes this fisherman's knee caps to spasm uncontrollably for the next few hours. This phenomenon is not easy to conceal. Other sessioners might get upset by the spectacle.
# Posted on November 4th 2010 by Atahualpa Quigley
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
...To say nothing of the difficulty of sliding onto a car seat, or session chair.
# Posted on November 4th 2010 by Atahualpa Quigley
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
Would the other sessioners be amenable to the heavy perfume of mosquito repellent, among other powerfully aromatic possibilities? Suppose you were dumb enough to try fishing while the water's too warm, and there's a good algal bloom on. The folks at the bar would love you for that.
# Posted on November 4th 2010 by Atahualpa Quigley
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
Yes, there are those wonderful establishments which cater exclusively to fishermen; where a happy clientele smells like so many wet dogs, and nobody gives a damn. The notion of Irish music there is a harder sell than you'd think. Irish music in E California is un-American.
# Posted on November 4th 2010 by Atahualpa Quigley
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
No, AQ, rainbows are not native to the UK or Europe. However, the Shasta variety has proved easy to farm and is released in many waters - mainly reservoirs, but some rivers too. But the stocks have to be maintained from farms, as very largely they don't breed in UK waters. The small Derbyshire Wye (river) is known in fly-fishing circles for having almost uniquely a breeding population - it's a limestone river of the sort I mentioned in a post above.
Shastas in rivers tend to disappear downstream from the stretch they've been put in, possibly out of some sea-going instinct. But as far as I know they're not quite the same thing as the sea-going cutthroats. I don't know if any of these have actually been released or caught in Britain. I assume (I may be wrong) that the Shasta and the cutthroat are two strains of the same species, as are the brown trout and the sea trout over here.
# Posted on November 5th 2010 by nicholas
Re: Flyfishing on the way to the session
Lake Shasta isn't some abstract place name for some of us. Nice to learn Californian fish are making a go of it in England. The change in diet must not have been too radical. Bet they miss the nightly crawdad feasts.
# Posted on November 5th 2010 by Atahualpa Quigley