5 June 2015

Wild browns on the River Darent

Had an hour on the river at lunch time today, between meeting the farmer about some fencing and heading home for a conference call. The crazy lives we lead!!


3 fish in an hour, all to adult Mayfly imitations. 

Life is good!

3 June 2015

Mayfly madness on the Kennet

I was very lucky to get an invite from a very nice man to fish a very nice stretch (8 miles!) of the Kennet last Saturday... slap bang in the middle of the Mayfly season. Thanks Phil!

While tying on a spinner pattern a spinner lands on my hand!
Actually, while there were good numbers of duns coming off sporadically the main feature was a huge spinner fall that built from about 3:30 and peaked at about 7 in the evening. The week prior, Phil tells me, there were no spinners about and the fish were focussed on the intense dun emergence.
Long shallow riffle heaving with mayfly and rising fish...


I went for a pee in the woods mid afternoon and found myself in a massive mating column of mayfly. This video barely does justice to the density of the swarm.

Video of one of the mating columns


This fish ate a dun imitation and tore off upstream, I thought Phil would be spooled!

The spinner fall hots up


Iron blue spinner?

Amazingly, there were fish that were not on the mayfly but focussed on the sporadic olive/iron blue hatch (not sure which it was).
Close up of a piece of stream at the end of the spinner fall... unbelievable!