Riverfly Monitoring Training

Last Sunday Ben and I attended a training session led by Stuart Crofts from the Riverfly Partnership. The day was very well organised and financed by Fiona McKenna of the Lincolnshire Rivers Trust (http://lincsrivers.co.uk/).

Stuart Crofts explaining the kick sampling methods
we will use on our own rivers

We learned about kick sampling methods as well as the 8 key groups monitored by the Riverfly Partnership and how to identify them (although this part wasn't new for Ben and I), how to record and submit the data and how it is used by the Partnership and the EA.

Ben examining our kick sample. Gammarus in their hundreds and lots of baetis nymphs too.
This stream also held a few caddis.

Baetis nymphs

A nice cased caddis from our sample

Stuart was an excellent instructor and the highlight for me was chatting to him about his work recording adult caddis as well as other fly related chat. His enthusiasm really is infectious.

More caddis cases, these were empty

A water cricket was an unexpected find, I hadn't heard of them before

Stuart also brought some preserved samples for us to look at down the microscope. These heptagenid nymphs are stunning creatures and photographs taken with my compact camera down the microscope came out quite well considering.

I'm looking forward to getting out on my own rivers to start sampling and keeping good records of the fly life. I will also be photographing our finds. We are starting with one site on the main river but hope to get a second site on another river approved by the EA soon.

If you don't already I'd encourage you to get out and look at the fly life on your river, especially if you can do it as part of a fly monitoring programme such as that run by the Riverfly Partnership. It's a great way to monitor the health of your river and is extremely informative when it comes to your own fishing too.

Thanks again to Fiona McKenna and Stuart Crofts for a great day.

JP Caddis Pupa (My version)

I finished tying some JP Caddis last night, a very effective fly introduced to me by Ben Lupton. In the past I have used tan and olive versions but I felt a version tied with orange sulphur coloured fly rite extra fine and a copper bead would work equally well (or better?!), so after restocking the standard colours I tied a batch of these. Ben and I chatted to the guys on the Fish-On stand at the BFFI earlier this year and in their view the most important part of the fly is to achieve a very distinct segmentation, so I have used brown flexifloss instead of wire to achieve that. 

 I'm yet to try them out but I expect them to work well. These are tied on 14s.

Hopefully I'll get a chance to try these at the weekend.