Too darn hot fer fishin'

As the temperature climbs through the thirties outside, I thought I'd do a round-up of recent news. The fish below was spotted from field 4 at Trottenden (2A) very early on Saturday morning. It was relatively cool then, and OK for a few hours before the sun got cooking. I put on a size 18 Plume Tip and crept upstream towards him and tried a bow and arrow cast into the very limited spot. No response, so I crept closer until I could dangle the fly over his nose, and still no response until he got fed up and cleared off.

Sadly there were almost no rises seen, but several other Rainbows and Browns were interested in a #16 CDC hackle tungsten bead quill nymph, down where the river was nice and cool. If you do go down at all during this weather, go really really early, and leave again after a few hours at most. The river temp yesterday was 17.3,and rising, so fish welfare must be a concern, as well as your own.

On the subject of fish welfare, you should know that SERT (South East Rivers Trust) have been modifying the Refuge again at the bottom of Beat 3A. If you haven't seen it, walk up the right bank at Harpers, past the entrance to the Outfall, and you can't miss it. You need to cross over to the left bank to continue up beat 3A at that point. The Refuge is designed to give small fish, fry etc somewhere to shelter when the river is in spate, and is also proving a very good breeding ground for amphibians as well as small fish. It kept getting silted up however, so the mouth is now deeper and deflectors have been added or re-sited, and it should be accessible for a digger in future if it does get clogged up. Digging it out by hand last year was effective for a while, but rather hard work.

SERT were due to do some more felling of dead and dangerous trees into the river down on 3C this week, but the weather gave them second thoughts. They might be back next week possibly, so beware if you wander down towards Beat 4. We'll put a note on the WhatsApp group when we know they'll be working there, so if you haven't joined it yet, now is the time.

Another event which did take place this week was a visit to Harpers from sixth-formers studying environmental science at The Langton School for Boys in Canterbury. The group took it in turns to take various measurements including turbidity, flow rate, phosphates, nitrates, and two types of kick-sampling.  They sampled at various points above and below the footbridge: up to the Outfall, down to just below the Chain Pool right bank, then the stream.

They have offered to send us a summary of the results once processed and collated, but highlights included small Leeches above the footbridge, Stonefly, Mayfly and Olive nymphs throughout, but remarkably, below the Chain Pool they found 3 Bullheads/Miller’s Thumb, then in the stream that runs into the Chain Pool they collected a 2” Elver. Ironic that those specimens came from there, as our catch returns have been pretty poor from below the Chain Pool this year. Of course catching Bullheads and Elvers on flies would be quite a challenge. I'll publish the results when we get them.

Meantime, try to stay cool, and just lie back with a cool drink and think of the river.

Cheers

PeterB