I almost missed it!'

Duffer's Fortnight' is a fly-fisherman's nickname for a magical period in late Spring when Mayflies are hatching; because it's when the trout gorge with abandon and even the clumsiest angler can bag his supper. It is much more famous on southern England chalk streams, and big west of Ireland loughs, but from time to time there is a 'big' hatch in Wales. Moc Morgan, a very famous welsh fly fisherman describes one here, for example.

Just why this should be so can partly be explained by the insects size (bigger than most) but it also has a lot to do with the mayflies ability to hatch profusely even in the most foul of weather. The adult insect has its allotted timespan to appear and generally speaking, the carnival goes on regardless even in slicing north winds and horizontal rain! In this short, intense hatching period, millions of mayfly emerge from nymph stage to spread their wings, drift on currents, dance airborne, mate, lay eggs and fall as spent spinners. Trout have a wonderfully excessive time gobbling up all stages of the insect and their normally cautious bent correspondingly diminishes. Anglers then rush to reap the benefits of this, their quarries reckless behaviour, and some splendid catches can result. Allegedly, even clumsy presentation with the fly crashing down in a heap of nylon can still yield results - although, I of course, never fail to drift the fly delicately before the snout of a feeding Brownie!

Anyway, I'd already missed out on my vow that 'this season I'll be fishing from the outset' - the complete re-vamp of this very website, among a million other things, having wiped out that assertion for yet another year. So by the end of May I really had to get out on the Western Cleddau and see how things are this season. Sadly, there were just a few Mayflies around and the fishing was bit rubbish really. A lot of rain had fallen a day or so earlier, and even though Cleddau spates run off quite quickly the water was still a bit high. I only landed a couple of tiddlers.

Although anglers have for centuries known about the propensity of mayfly to spur larger, more cautious, trout into feeding avidly, a deal of myth and legend has grown up around these luscious lacewings. The first bone of contention relates to the exact name/classification of mayfly. Today most anglers draw clear distinctions between olives, stoneflies and the like, however historically anglers of old often called all large winged insects `mayflies'. This confusion probably resulted from naturalists tendencies to call the whole family of upwinged flies (Ephemeroptera) `May-flies'.

Whatever the science or the art, whatever the size of the hatch, and to some exent whatever the weather, I'm just happy to live and work somewhere that allows me to fish in such beautiful surroundings just 5 minutes from my front door. And as every fisherman will tell you: 'There's always next time...'

[ Reproduced from www.reallywildfestival.co.uk ]

Bookmark/Search this post with:

 |   |   |   |   |   |   |