Nice to see the rose bay willow herb, field mace and meadow sweet in full bloom this month, we’ll not mention the Himalayan balsam.
Water levels are getting quite low at the start of July with the gauge now out of the river, with no rain forecast for at least two weeks it could get desperate. The water temperature is holding up at around 17.5-18oC, not bad as it is a lot higher than that upstream with some section’s stopping fishing.
A little blanket weed is developing in the margins with the heat, the Ranunculus is doing very well and quite a bit of onion weed has been cleared out of Carr Head along with a few branches that were not wanted on the river bed.
So now the trout and grayling are more concentrated in certain areas of the deeper and faster sections. That fishing has been very good using small nymph’s and spider patterns. Started seeing the odd salmon showing the second week of July, but good numbers have not arrived just yet.
The 21st of the month and a lot of salmon and a few sea trout have come in from the estuary on a half moon tide, both grilse and some big salmon among them. A lot of these fish are now stopping on our beat and residing in the deep pool in the woods above Carr Head where there is some thirty foot of water in places.
It is good to see, at one point it looked like they were not going to come in with this low and warm water, but here they are at last!
Interestingly enough, we have a shoal of dace in the Quarry pool, haven’t seen them for at least twenty odd years or more.
The third week and there are enough fish in the pools to make it very interesting and also entertaining, only thing is, they are not taking anything anglers are offering! Warm water certainly does not help, small flies, big flies and all other combinations are totally ignored in the daytime, but there have been takers during last light which unfortunately have not stuck on for more than a few seconds.
There seems to be fish dropping back down the river also, they are mostly silver and recently from the tide, but there are some coloured ones among them from upstream I would imagine.
