Ledwyche Trout on The Rise

The last time i fished the Ledwyche Brook in South Shropshire was back in the seventies when the BAA had a stretch on it.

When i arrived at the car park at 5.00pm the weather was warm, sunny and humid and the Trout were rising like crazy!



Some Trout were taking insects with a splash, others with a gentle sip, and the only obvious flies about were spinners.
On went the recently successful Balloon Caddis and a fish came quickly, but after a quite spell i switched to a Grey Emerger. This proved to be a good move as Trout came to hand on this throughout the evening and later to a Sulphur Emerger.




The fishing was good with plenty of Trout being caught to 13" and lots lost.




I have been amazed that these small rivers have such a healthy head of Trout, due mainly to good invertebrate life and plenty of cover from predators.

Its sad that once great rivers like the Irfon in Wales now have a much reduced population of Trout, probably because of acidification in its upper reaches, which has had an adverse effect on the invertebrate life of the river.

On the downside a poacher was seen fishing our water with worms, he was asked to leave and his car registration number was taken.



Monkshood was seen growing alongside the Ledwyche.

An Evening Well Spent.

On Thursday, fellow blogger Mick and i paid a visit to the Lugg for a late afternoon/evening Trout fishing session. This was Mick's first chance to fish this beautiful stretch and i was interested to see how he would fare.



I left Mick at the bottom of the beat and walked up to try some of the deeper runs and pools. Fishing these swims with heavy nymphs, i hoped to find some bigger Trout as the Lugg fish seem to peak at about 11-13"



Fish were caught on this method but no big Trout showed , however some decent Grayling up to 15" were netted, most taking the Hares Ear nymph.

In the evening clouds of rust coloured Spinners danced in the air and Trout began rising to these as they floated down spent.
On went the dry fly and the next two hours turned out to be frustrating, as is often the case when fishing the dry fly. I did manage to catch 6 good Trout but only after trying lots of different patterns. With no imitative pattern in my fly box various emergers were used to catch the fish.




When i met up with Mick he'd had a similar experience, seeing lots of rising fish but only catching a small percentage. He did catch on the Pheasant Tail nymph earlier but struggled when the Trout began rising, again not owning a good spent spinner copy.

It was almost dark when we reached the car park and we had caught 25 fish between us, with Mick catching 15, mostly Trout with a few Grayling.




The Beautiful Demoiselle a stunning damselfly was seen, the males rest on bankside vegetation waiting for females. Only two species of damselfly in Britain have obviously coloured wings. They both belong to the genus Calopteryx. In this species the wings of the mature male are very dark blue-black and those of the female are iridescent brown-green. The body colour is metallic blue-green in the male and green with a bronze tip in the female.

Rea Trout In A Spin

Fished the river Rea on Thursday and Friday evening, the later was just a couple of hours however due to heavy showers.
On Thursday there were one or two Mayflies coming off, clouds of spinners in the air and the Trout were rising.

I tied on a Balloon Caddis with a Pheasant Tail nymph below and quickly caught 2 fish both taking the dry fly. After a while with Trout rising freely, off came the nymph and the rest of the evening only the Caddis dry fly was used.

The fish were of a reasonable size, up to 13" and fat having been gorging for the last week or so on Mayflies.

I walked up the beat covering lots of fish and if the presentation of the fly was correct it usually resulted in a netted fish.

It is a good idea to carry a wading staff on the Rea due to its rocky nature and deep pools, also a 7 ft rod will save you a lot of frustration as it is tree lined throughout, expect to lose some flies!

At the end about 18 fish were caught all taking the Balloon Caddis and of a good stamp. These bigger fish being less cautious due to the feast created at this time of the year by hatching and spent Mayfly.

During the evening i saw two female Goosanders, one of which had about six to eight young with her! small clip on video bar

A welcome sight were Dippers and Kingfisher a sign of a healthy river with plenty of insect life and a good head of fish.

On Friday i used exactly the same method, catching 8 nice trout in a brief couple of hours between the heavy rain.