Magical Mayfly May 19th, 2010
There’s many a time when I’m sitting on a chair lift in a blizzard, collar up, hat down, cold biting at me, that I drift off and dream of warm spring days by the river listening to bird song and the slurp of wild brown trout gobbling up Mayflies. So once the winter season is over and the gear is stowed away, one of the first things I reach for is the fly rod, and this year I splashed out and brought a new one, a Fladen 7 footer, which is a wonderful rod for the money. I also ordered my roving vouchers from the Wye and Usk Foundation and called my mate and mentor in all things fishy, Graham Priest.
We go back a fair way Graham and I, we’ve both worked on various angling TV productions in the past, such as saltwater fly fishing in Cuba with Matt Hayes. Graham has worked and presented a little on Wet Nets with Matt too, while I’ve shot features for Improve Your Coarse Fishing and Angling Times in the past.
So with vouchers in hand we ventured into Herefordshire to fish the River Arrow. A beautiful little river that rises in Powys in Wales, and meanders it’s way down to meet the with the River Lugg south of Leominster, Spring was in full swing, the whole river bank was lush with colour and the insect life was something to be seen. Walking through the dock leaves, squadrons of Damselflies lifted off and flitted around us, we watched them as they captured Mayflies on the air. It’s amazing to see such an abundance of life after such a cold winter, so I decided to shoot a fair bit of it and make it the theme for the day.
I was trying to travel light with my cameras so I just packed the D300s, I didn’t take my macro lens as the macro on my 24-70mm would do just fine. Unfortunately my new Nikon zoom lenses are too large for my Ewa Marine underwater housing, so I had to leave it at home, I think an investment in a small prime lens might be the answer for that little problem. I also had a play with Grahams Canon S90 compact, which I have to say produced some incredible results for such a tiny camera. See if you can spot them in the slideshow, they are slightly squarer than 35mm frame.
With so much insect life around we were sure that the fish would be biting so we walked to the end of the beat, I tied on one of Grahams magnificent hand made Mayflies, and slowly, we fished our way up stream. But the fish hadn’t read the script and were being rather tricky to catch! I suppose a big fish is a big fish for good reason, and that reason is, that he is crafty and not easily fooled. Every fish that rose seemed to be at the edge of the nastiest bramble bush, overhanging tree, or worst still, in it’s roots.
We fished the beat twice and I lost more than I caught, and that includes flies, I landed one but to be honest I was glad to just be there. Graham had better luck landing a couple of really nice wild brown trout, which had the most vivid red spots all over them. We released them back into the wild as there are more fishermen than fish these days.
The light was good all day and I managed to shoot quite a few pictures in and out of casts, but by 7pm we’d had enough, we packed up and went for a well deserved pint and a pork pie to finish a fantastic day in the English countryside. Next stop the Welsh hill country. If you wish to buy any of these pictures please Click Here
