Trouting in March
starts with hatches of the large dark olive followed by the march brown, often
hatching on cold blustery days. Smaller cousins of these ephemerids soon follow
on and are often accompanied by the grannom, a small day-flying sedge, which
can hatch in large quantity but usually only for short periods at a time.
An apparently dead river can be transformed when the grannom are taken by,
it seems at times, every fish in the river. Fishing at this time of year is
best in the middle of the day.
The small stone fly, the yellow sally, starts to hatch in April and continues
sporadically until August. The alder makes its first appearance about this
time. May heralds the yellow may dun, also known locally, and confusingly,
as the yellow sally, neither fly bearing any relationship to each other apart
from the colour. As the hawthorn comes into flower towards the end of May
so the air above the adjacent fields and river banks can be full of that large
relative of the housefly, the hawthorn fly, a jet black fly with long dangling
legs.. If the wind is strong enough to blow the flies onto the water the trout
can feed voraciously on these insects. On the other hand trout are just as
likely to ignore them as regard them as manna from heaven. Curiously, I find
trout willing to take a dry hawthorn fly weeks after the end of the hatch
when all else fails to attract.
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