Parr, Lamprey and Trout

I headed out earlier than usual to the river as I'd been informed the trout were rising freely between ten and twelve, and again between two and four. Not on Thursdays though, only the first three days of the week. During the morning I only saw three fish rise and very little insect life. As I stood on the bridge at the bottom of the stretch pondering what to do next I got talking to an old chap who commiserated with me as the fish ha been rising freely in the morning for the last few days. He assured me that they would probably rise for a couple of hours in the afternoon, from around one o'clock. He did warn about something my informant had mentioned, there are now a lot of 2-3" trout and parr active. They knock the fly about something chronic very much in the manner of minnows or small dace. He also pointed to a couple of pencil sized eels, like I'd seen in a couple of other small rivers, but he reckoned they were brook lamprey looking for somewhere to spawn. I must admit I'd began to think the ones I'd seen before were lamprey after seeing various bits of video of them recently. The only way to be sure would be to catch on really.

After a spot of luncheon by the river the fish did start to rise, as predicted, just after one. Taking the old chaps advice I'd tied on a small black fly which was attacked the moment it hit the water. Thankfully it was a rather nice little trout of nearly six inches. Over the next half hour several more of a similar size came to hand. Then the little horrors showed up and they were right, they were worse than small dace or minnows. More often than not they would miss the fly, but still manage to drown it. Thankfully a couple of false casts would dry it, but it id get rather annoying as they would beat the larger trout to the fly. I did try a small foam beetle, but this was completely ignored by the larger trout. By watching and waiting I managed to avoid this problem to some extent as there seemed to be pockets of the smaller fish. The trick was to look for areas where there was just the occasional rise. Eventually the rises stopped as the insects disappeared. I had a look at a another stretch, but it appeared to be dead. A fact confirmed by another angler as he returned to his car. After a pint at a local hostelry I headed home as I'd had quite a good day all in all. The other angle was going to wait to see if there was a evening rise.

I've fished here off and on for years and this problem which is not something I should get annoyed about as it shows that there was a very successful spawning last winter, unlike other winters. Hopefully some of the larger trout will turn cannibal and stay in the river rather than migrate to sea.