Spring brown trout fishing.

During March to April on the northern streams, the trout are dropping down the system and beginning to feed hard after the rigours of winter spawning to regain their condition. Often trout caught at this time of year will rattle when releasing them in the net, they are full of snail shells from the sparse winter-feeding. As the water temperature gradually rises, this stimulates the invertebrate life into growth and action; the river takes on a different character and a new energy. From March to May, the weather can be unpredictable, from being cold, wet with biting winds from the north and east accompanied by high coloured water, to a taste of what balmy weather there is to come in June.
Fly hatches at this point in the season, mainly Large Dark Olives this early on, stonefly and March Browns, will start to show around mid-day onwards, and the intensity of the hatch will be determined by the climate. If the weather is wet, windy and cold and unsuitable for emergence, nymphs that are ready to run the gauntlet will tend to wait for the next opportune moment of ideal conditions. Depending on the intensity of the hatch, usually determines how well the trout come on the take, it generally goes hand in hand.

Brown trout do not shoal as grayling will, unlike their sea going cousins the sea trout, which happen to be the same fish , they are individuals and very territorial.

When you locate a shoal of grayling, often you can stand in the same place and take many fish either until the shoal go down or they move on. With trout, once a fish has been removed from its lie, it is best to move on to find another lie, and taking note of the location, maybe visit that same spot at a future point in the day when another may have moved in. How we locate these lies where the trout like to be is not by pure chance although that sometimes happens, but by reading the water to reveal their possible whereabouts.

They say in fly-fishing that presentation is everything, and on the whole it generally is, but there's more to presentation than initially meets the eye. It certainly helps if we can present the cast and what we think is the right fly gently onto the water, but is it imitating the right stage of the life cycle of that fly, is it in the right place, at the right height in the water column and is it behaving as it should?
Some anglers are far more successful than others, but they are not always necessarily the best or the longest casters, although that certainly helps. As far back as the seventeenth century Charles Cotton was talking about fine and far off. With the equipment available in those day's, that cast would have been made with a twelve foot two handed hazel pole, and the line of plaited flax or horse tail hair thrown around thirty feet, length of pole included, with just two hairs for the tippet. For us these day's, that sort of length of the cast is where we begin, and being fine in the leader/ tippet department is taken for granted with the modern materials we have at our disposal.

When the novice is faced for the first time with a wide river, the initial thought is that a longer cast is needed to cover larger water, and most of the day is spent throwing uncontrolled cast across the water as far as possible. With the huge amount of line out on the surface, all semblance of control of the fly, whether it is wet or dry is lost. The vagaries and the many differing speeds of the complex currents across the river are gripping and making the fly line unmanageable, each section of current taking a loop of fly line with it, causing the fly to drag. Add to this a lot of judicious mending (disturbing any chance of a fish closer in), and the fly does not behave naturally as intended.
First glance at a pool on a wide river need not be such a daunting prospect; it is a matter of planning, studying and breaking things down into bite size chunks of information. If you ever wondered what the anglers you often see sat quietly on the bank looking at the water for sometimes-long periods of time are doing, they are observing and reading the river.
But there are a few things to consider before reading and entering the water you may want to fish, for example, if you have never fished there before, what is the wading like and are there any surprises. A good reccy or someone with local knowledge is priceless, as there are many places where the wading seems to be straightforward, then you find yourself on a ledge with a gully either side, and a drop off below.
Always check the rule of the fishery, there are many, is it dry fly only, is wading allowed, how far does the beat extend, is it catch and release and things like the size of fly permitted to name but a few.
As a prelude to reading any river, in this case we are fishing for brown trout, we have to consider what does a trout need, and why it would be in any particular part of the river. Basic requirements are, water flowing over the gills, an easy place to hold station in the current, cover or somewhere to bolt to when danger approaches, and an easy available source of food.

Reading the river is not as complicated as you may think; the body of water moving within the confines of the riverbank behaves accordingly to the shape of those banks, the shape of the riverbed and the speed of the flow. If the watercourse were totally parallel and the sides and bottom smooth and level, there would be the fastest flow in the middle and top of the water, and the slower flows to the edges and near the riverbed due to the friction of the water against them, in reality that hardly ever exist. The banks constantly meander, the bottom rises and falls, it has obstacles like weed and rocks; this is what gives the surface of the water the open book we are to read.

If we look and think of the wide river as not being a wide river, but a series of individual streams, that is the first step. Because the bottom and banks are never even, the water takes various paths at various speeds through the shallow and deeper sections, bouncing off the banks and obstacles as it goes. When two currents collide at different speeds they do not mix very well, they rub or roll off each other, obvious sometimes when you see a coloured tributary pouring into a clear main river, they stay distinctly separated for quite some time. It is the same in still waters (thermoclines) and to lesser extent rivers; the different temperatures of water are reluctant to mix without agitation. If we can imagine that there are lanes of individual columns of water travelling at different speeds hitting and rolling off each other, they will leave a mark on the surface.

This mark is called a crease, a very distinct line, on a windless day it is quite clear to see and is sometimes adorned with a line of bubbles, vortexes and flotsam.

If there are bubbles and flotsam within that crease of current, then also there will be food, the flies that have emerged or are in the process of emerging, some crippled, various wind blown terrestrials and others drying their wings before alighting. All these are drawn into that crease of water, and the trout know this all too well, fish tend to lie on the easier quieter side of these moving columns of current, this is their conveyor of food. Underwater features generally make other disturbances on the surface like turbulence, where the current hits an obstacle and wells up. Such as rocks and weed, these also make good holding places, fish tend to favour lying in front, to the side and on top of these in the cushion of water, hardly ever behind because of the turbulence.

Making a start on a big river in late spring on a cool morning late March for instance, we should consider things and ask ourselves a few questions and try to answer them before we even wet a line, (that angler sat on the bank). The outfit, a 9-9.5 feet rod, with a 5-6-wt floating line. The species that will be hatching at this time of the year, more than likely they are L.D.Os, (Large Dark Olives). There might possibly be the odd March Brown early on, but a rare sight these days in any serious numbers and then the swarm of grannom in April.
What size of fly? The size of fly that has been determined to imitate a L.D.O is a fourteen on a three-pound tippet. Look for any obvious signs of insect activity at present, it is morning and a bit cool yet, and see if there any fish rising or disturbing the surface.

If there is no activity, we may want to try a team of wets on a nine or ten foot tapered leader, something like a light weighted nymph on the point like a Pheasant Tail (P.T.N), with a spider or two of different patterns on the five and four-pound six inch droppers. This way, with the droppers three feet apart and the leader de-greased, we can cover a considerable part of the column of water and gauge at what depth the fish may taking.

The very first crease seen from the bank with any sort of depth to it, is the one that needs explored first, this is where we want to place our offering, right in the crease, that narrow corridor where the fish are expecting to find food.
Upstream or downstream casting presentation? This depends on the effect you want to make to the flies behaviour. Most of the time I would go with the upstream technique for a couple of reasons, the fish always lie facing into the current as they have a blind spot behind them, they are easier to approach, and less wary fish are easier to catch. Most of the time dries, nymphs and spiders are fished with a dead drift, no drag, and a longer drag free drift can be achieved this way.
Sometimes we need to emulate an insect's behaviour that has just emerged, (the Dun) in the case of the dry fly, or one that is crippled trying to emerge through the surface film, they must drift static. Nymphs that sometimes lose their footing and are helplessly carried by the current, and others that may be in the process of erratically heading for the surface to emerge. North Country Spiders, as simple and uncomplicated as they are, mimic these movements exactly; just what a fish would expect to see. This requires rod and line manipulation to control the slack line as it comes back toward you, and yet keeping in touch with the flies while keeping them in that crease without disturbing them. These flows and creases, are not always stable and tend to wander, it requires concentration. As the team of flies come to the end of the drift, lifting and twitching the rod back into the roll cast position prior to the next cast, will mimic the emerging nymphs.

Downstream techniques work too (across and down), but in my opinion are not as effective as the upstream, the fly line is cast across the river at an angle, then the current swings the flies around to the dangle under tension with the odd mend to slow things down. A few bites will be had from time to time as the flies traverse the stream mostly high in the water and at an un-natural speed, it is probably when the flies have travelled through the creases from one side to the other, the flies are only in the best taking area for a fleeting moment. These takes will more than likely be very snatchy with a lot of missed connections, especially if the rod is held at a low instead of high angle with no slack line for the fish to turn with when it accepts the fly.

Getting into the water without a little stealth is the first big mistake, the fish know you are there and they vacate, wade quietly to within eight to ten yards of the crease you are going to explore. Pull off enough line to make the cast, shake it onto the water in front and roll cast it straight, away from your intended target before performing the presentation cast, whether it is a Spey or overhead. Cast just beyond and to one side of the crease, so as the current takes hold and the flies begin sinking, the set up will drift into and can be worked along this narrow corridor of the crease with a little rod movement and gentle mending. By short cast and keeping the rod fairly high much of the fly line is off the surface and there is direct contact with the cast that is being fished. Takes most of the time fishing sub-surface are very gentle, indicators are lifts of the bow in the fly line or twitches and stabs at the fly line leader connection, if there is no control over the slack being created these signals will be lost.
After every cast, a pace is taken upstream so that new ground is covered, always following the crease, or if the next crease across is reachable without over extending, that is fished also. If we want to prospect the whole pool, we can either get out and return to where we started, or if no one else is waiting to fish the pool, fish it back downstream across and down quickly along the same crease to the start point. Then wade a little further out toward the middle and cover the next channel of current or the next stream, a new crease and do the same. All the time this routine is going on, we are still reading and watching the water, as the temperature starts to rise around noon, one or two olives start to appear on the surface. This is the dinner bell sounding, a little later, sometimes there is a delay, the fish are up and taking the flies, most are humping just below the surface indicating they are taking nymphs just below the surface film on the point of emerging.

Now is the time to change to a damp fly to imitate this, something like an olive klinkhammer with its hackle above and body below the surface, with similar attributes an F fly is good, or even single spiders like Water hen Bloa and Partridge and Orange. As the hatch increases the trout are actually breaking the surface now, and it is time to change yet again, a dry, size fourteen well greased in the hackle and tail Greenwell Glory is as good as any right at this moment. Looking for rises and placing the fly around three feet upstream of the rising fish from a slight angle is a very visual and exiting way to fish, let the fly drift right past where the fish rose if it did not take before making the next cast as not to disturb it. Cast to the fish that are rising closest to you first rather than the farthest.
As the day wears on around three in the afternoon the insect activity slows almost to a stop and once again the fish go down, time now to revert back to the morning tactics. Toward dusk there may be a spinner fall of Olives, always a good time as the light is fading, the trout now have more confidence and become good takers to spent patterns fished in the surface film. Who said reading was boring.
Glyn freeman 05.