The Lady obliges

After almost a month of endless 4-foot spates, a few dry days have at last allowed the rivers to drop to a low enough level to allow grayling fishing. Last Saturday four rods ventured out on to a still high but clear River Lyd, and caught a total of 9 grayling, the best a cracker of almost 2 pounds. They also managed a plethora of brownies and salmon parr, and two sea trout. All the fish were taken on nymphs, some fished the Czech nymph style, others used a single nymph with an indicator. Heavy tungsten-beaded nymphs were needed to get down quickly in the high flows. Some showers are forecast for a day or two, and then it looks like an anticyclone is going to settle over Europe, to give cold but dry conditions which should be ideal for tempting a few more 'Ladies' from the streams.

Arundell Arms River Maps - Now Available!

Local artist David Measey has been hard at work over the last few months and has produced this lovely map of our rivers and fishing beats. High-quality prints are available at only £29.00 each. Please call us on 01566 784666 if you would like to order one.

2013 Season Totals

The very hot dry summer impacted severely on salmon catches during 2013, and the very low water levels made trout and sea trout fishing fairly tough at times.Salmon; 14, of which 13 were released. Only one fish was taken on spinner, the rest being on fly. Best fish 14lbs, for Charlotte Jones, on a small Black Bear Green Butt tube, in Quarry pool on the Tamar on the last day of the season, October 14^th.Most salmon were taken in the final 3 weeks of the season, when we had at least some water in the rivers. We also had one fish from our rod on the Lower Tamar, and two by our rods at Endsleigh.Sea Trout; 138, of which 102 were released. Best fish 8 lbs, for David Pilkington, on a Black Tadpole from the tail of Quarry Pool, on falling spate water on 28^th May. Considering the drought, sea trout ran quite well, with reasonable catches for rods night fishing from mid-June right through July and August. Surface lures in particular caught a lot of fish, with the beats on the river Lyd, as usual producing the best fishing.Brown Trout; 1,820, virtually all released. Best fish 14 inches, for Ian Hardman on a Parachute Adams from Home beat on the Lyd on May 26th. Several other very good fish were taken, including fish of 13 inches for Phil Davies on the Thrushel and another the same size for Mike Walton from the Ottery. Trout fishing was excellent during late May and June, before the water levels really dropped away, and also perked up in September as things cooled down slightly.Grayling; 58, all released, best fish 1 ½ pounds for John Fawcett, on a nymph from the Ottery in May. Several other good grayling were taken, including fish of 15 inches for Luke Bannister from the Lyd in October.
Since the salmon fishing closed in mid-October we have had deluges of rain, putting the rivers into full spate and making grayling fishing an impossibility. Salmon and sea trout have had more than enough water on which to run, and I am looking forward to watching them spawning, when it will be possible to get a better picture of what the true numbers of fish were really like this season.

David Pilkington

Season's End

October 14th saw all rivers settling and clearing, the Lyd very much so, the Tamar still with some colour from the last spate, but definitely fishable. Salmon remained elusive, although David Pilkington struck it lucky with two fish from the Lyd during the afternoon, a well coloured cock fish of 28 1/2 inches from Silver Doctor pool, and a small hen grilse from King Pool. Both took a size 12 double hook fly, appropriately named the Autumn Gold.
Pride of place for the 2013 season has to go to young Charlotte Jones, whose boyfriend James Abbatt had taken his first ever salmon the previous evening. Charlotte caught a splendid hen fish of around 14 pounds, with less than an hour of daylight left before the season closed. The fish came from the neck of Quarry Pool on the Tamar, which had been fished by all and sundry throughout the day.
Some very serious rain has fallen in the past week or so, giving the biggest spates since February. Yesterday at Hartley weir on beat 3, plenty of sea trout and brownies were running on the falling flood water, along with some salmon. One salmon made it straight over the full height of the weir, the best part of 5 feet - having made a couple of abortive attempts, this fish hit the laminar flow on the shoulder of the weir square on, and shot off upstream like a slipped greyhound.
It remains very warm, insects where everywhere, stoneflies still making egg-laying flights over the water, hornets busy in a hole in an alder, midges and even butterflies around. The fish passing over the weir will be spawning soon, the brownies and sea trout within a matter of weeks, the salmon soon after. The year moves on.

Below is a series of photos of Charlotte Jones, assisted by brother Alexander, landing the largest Arundell Arms salmon of the season...

 

NOW we're talking - water at last

The Tamar is currently running at 3ft+ above summer level. The Lyd is also high. We may just rescue the salmon season yet.
For anyone that can get away at the last minute, a day for salmon on our rivers next week might be a wise move! We have limited availability at £40 per rod per day and rods are being snapped up fast. Call us on 01566 784666 or email at fishingoffice@arundellarms.com for details.

Hope at last?

 Things could just be looking up for salmon rods, after endless months of drought. David Morel, pausing overnight with us en route to a partridge day in Cornwall, strolled casually down to Bottom beat on the Lyd yesterday afternoon, and was both amazed and delighted when a salmon just came up through the low clear water of Thunder and Lightning pool to take his small Cascade. The rather coloured hen fish, around 6 pounds, was safely released.
This morning Rob Morris, having just qualiifed as an airline pilot, kept up the good work with his first ever salmon, another rather coloured hen fish of 28 inches, say 8 pounds, from Lyd foot pool, on a small Pearly Stoat's Tail. Rob very sportingly released the fish, with the whole event captured on a phone camera by his good lady, Sammy.
More real rain is still very much needed, the ground very dry just a few inches down, but at least there is a few fish in our water.

Arundell Shop: End of Season Sale

With just a couple of weeks of our season to go, we have reduced a load of great items for sale in the Cockpit - our tackle shop. We have the superb Guideline Exceed and LPXe rods reduced, for example a 15ft 10/11wt LPXe from £449.99 to £404.99 or the Exceed 9ft 7wt from £219.99 to £179.99. There are many other items with great reductions such as Costa Del Mar sunglasses and Redington rods so click here - TACKLE SHOP - to browse.

We've also just had a long-awaited delivery of Danielsson Reels arrive. These are priced with 30% off at the moment. Made in Sweden in small batches, these tend to go very quickly. These are unlikely to be available again until around April next year... you have been warned. Have a look on the shop website to see the range.

September Report

September continued very dry, with rivers at rock bottom levels, eventually relieved by some rain which was largely absorbed by the parched ground, but did give us a rise of a few inches on all rivers. The Tamar ran extremely dirty, but this water did encourage some fish to run, and we caught our first salmon since June. Charlie Yeoward released a 5 pound grilse from Quarry pool on the Tamar, taken on a black and yellow tube fly. More grilse were seen showing, so at last a few fish are on the move.

Sea trout night fishing provided 15 fish for September, with a few days to go as I write, and a total of 138 for the season to date. Best fish this month was one of 2 ¼ pounds for David Pilkington from beat 3, taken on a P.R. Decent numbers of sea trout were in our beats, and a couple were taken from the Thrushel by trout fishers.

Trout fishing perked up as temperatures slowly dropped, with nice hatches of stone flies and some late caddis keeping fish rising. 131 trout and 8 grayling were released by trout rods, with some excellent brownies up to 12 inches.

Prospects for the final fortnight of the salmon season are entirely dependant upon some real rain, rivers are still very low and a big spate would be most welcome.

David Pilkington

River Report

Despite a fleeting spell of wet weather, rivers have once again dropped back to summer lows. Shortly after the rain, regular rod Charlie Yeoward managed a grilse from Quarry Pool on a one-inch Black and Yellow tube. Trout fishing has perked up this month, as it usually does towards the season's end, and the sea trout are present in good numbers with several being caught both by night and by day on small wets and nymphs. Until we get a serious dose of the wet stuff, salmon fishing will be patchy at best! Our (rain) dancing shoes have all but worn out. Here's to hoping.

Tying Sea Trout Flies

With the season drawing to a close, it'll be soon time for winter nights at the fly tying vice. Here are three videos of hotel instructor Tim on how to tie some hotel night fishing favourites. The footage is filmed in HD video, so feel free to adjust the quality setting (bottom right-hand corner) to suit.

The hotel's Youtube channel can be found here:

Arundell Arms on Youtube

Tying the WMD

Tying the WMD Gurgler

Tying the Werewolf

River Report

Still plenty of sea trout on the Lyd, and they are starting to switch back to taking larger flies as the water temperature drops a little. Shoals of up to 20 fish were spotted yesterday in small pools, and fish were jumping every few minutes on the lower river in bright sunlight.
Today's overcast skies and cooler temperature should give anglers a few trout, although we really, really could do with a drop (I mean, deluge) of rain. This is going to be essential for any salmon fishing during autumn.

Rivers Update

Apologies for the lack of river updates of late... conditions have been pretty consistent, with a lack of rain over the last few weeks meaning that the rivers are still running low and clear. Salmon fishing is on hold for now due to low water. With a bit of luck, we will be treated to a deluge before the peak of the season in September and October (season ends Oct 14th). We will need several days of constant, heavy rain to give us the high water that salmon fishers crave. Here's hoping for an Autumn like 2010; following a large flood during late September, our anglers caught 42 salmon in just 12 days.

Sea trout fishing has been good during August. The fish were a little tricky during the very hot weather and extremely low water but, following some cooler weather, catches have picked up very well and most anglers have caught a fish or two. The current catch stands at 115 sea trout for the season, with September still to come. Smaller (size 6 and 8) wet flies such as the WMD and Pilk's Bumble have been responsible for most, though surface lures such as the Gurgler have also performed well. The Lyd has produced all of the fish of late - it is running relatively higher than the Tamar. However, congratulations must be given to Ashley Royston, a local night fisher who, while fishing a neighbouring fishery's water adjacent to 7A on the Tamar, landed and released a huge sea trout of around 9 1/2lb - a fish of a lifetime off the river.

Trout fishing has been very slow - typical for August - with only a few small fish being caught on the main rivers. The smaller streams such as the Wolf have faired much better. Anglers have had to fish hard using small goldhead nymphs and tiny dries to trick the wild browns that are very picky. With some cooler temperatures now, September fishing usually picks up with fish coming back onto the dries for a final flurry before the season closes at the end of the month.

We'll leave you with a shot of Home beat on the Lyd as darkness falls.... we hope to see you on the river soon.

A Summer of Sea Trout?

Things are looking up for night sea trout fisherman this summer, with 12 fish recorded recently. The Lyd doesn't usually see many sea trout until late June, so with reasonable numbers spotted in the pools already, we are hoping for a bumper season. The fish currently resident in the pools are mostly 2-3 pounders and bright silver. July will see the start of our school peal run and with huge numbers of smolts present in early spring, we are hopeful for large numbers of these returning.

If you have never tried the Lyd, it's a small, intimate river and you are fishing for sea trout at close quarters. All that's required is a 9ft 6wt outfit with a floating line, and it's the perfect training ground to get started in night fishing. The peak of the season is usually the last week of July, though these are migratory fish and therefore rarely predictable. We have some availability left in July, so please call us if you are interested.

Jon Barnard with a fish just shy of 3lb, beat 3 on his size 4 WMD (with extra flash!)

Russell Clarke with his first ever sea trout, 2 1/2lb, beat 3 on a size 4 WMD

Is this a record?

A superb sea trout , 27 inches long and as fat as a pig, for David Pilkington today. The Tamar had risen and coloured after a half-inch of rain yesterday, tempting David to try for an early peal, and this fish took his Black Tadpole at the very tail of Quarry Pool. As a highly experienced sea trout angler, David had cunningly contrived to have a loop of loose fly line wrapped around the handle of his landing net behind his back at the very moment the fish took - somehow he managed to disentangle the line before the fish tried to leave the pool.

The fishy Gods were being kind, the single barbless hook stayed firmly in the big peal's jaw and the fish eventually slipped into the net at the second attempt. Until the fish rolled at close range, David was convinced the fish was small salmon, as it did not fight with the usual terrifying speed and wildness of most sea trout. Weights are subjective, but a chunky early-season peal of 27 inches has to weigh around 7 1/2 pounds. The barbless hook slipped out very easily, and this cracking sea trout should live to spawn many more if its kind.

Mister Hawthorn - You're Late!

At long last, I saw the first Hawthorn fly of the year yesterday. Bibio Marcii is so named because it appears on St. Mark's day, which is 25th April. Being almost a month late demonstrates what a cold, late spring we are having here in Devon. Our little wild brownies absolutely love this big, juicy land-born fly, which falls helplessly to the water on breezy days, and we are having plenty of those.
The trout were rising well in the slower pools, and there is still a good flow after a big spate last week. As well as a few hawthorns, there were plenty of olives, some yellow may duns and more black gnats, and fish caught were fat and full, as they jolly well should be in late May. The Mayfly itself, Ephemera Danica, is at last being seen on the Ottery, where two rods caught 45 trout yesterday. I told them that they could try harder, but it was a reasonable effort.
David Pilkington

Summer is a-coming in - I think!

You may be forgiven for thinking that, after more than 60 years, the sudden realization that summer is actually happening again may not really do much to me - but it still does! Today, despite a cool wind, the fresh green leaves glowed in the odd glimpses of sun, black gnats swarmed over the stickles for the very first time this year, rhododendrons bloomed on the Lifton Park drive - by God it felt good! A few trout rose, more in some pools than others, but they were catchable on dry fly. An inch of extra water after yesterday's rain has helped push more smolts seaward, but they are still not all gone yet.
All things are late this season, not a sign of a hawthorn fly, and in the frenzied melee of hirundines over the river fields there are still no swifts. I am sure they will be here soon, as will the salmon, to catch a salmon at Lifton before the swifts arrive is rare indeed. Rain is falling again as I write, and should give the little smolts encouragement to head down-river tonight - I wish them well on their dangerous journey, and look forward to their return.
David Pilkington

Smolts Galore!

The seemingly interminable non-Spring of 2013 rolls gently on, at last a few glimpses of the sun,but everything natural, in terms of flowers, trees, insects etc., appears to be 3 or 4 weeks behind. One thing, however, to brighten the horizon, is the excellent numbers of smolts in our water. All the rivers, from the larger Tamar to the humble little tributaries like the Wolf and Thrushel, are stuffed full of both salmon and sea-trout smolts. These brave, beautiful little bars of silver are currently dropping down every night towards the sea, helped by smatterings of rain and decent flows in the rivers.
I cannot recall seeing so many, the pool above the gauging weir at Polson on the Tamar was alive with them, dimpling the surface across the whole pool. Their presence has not gone unnoticed by the cormorants, fortunately just before our licence expired, so did one of a pair seen on the Tamar.
This superb smolt run augers well for the future, many of the sea-trout smolts were as much as 8 inches long, and these will be back in the river again by July, having at least trebled their weight. The run of school peal should be good this year, as for the salmon it will be one or two full years before they return.
Trout fishers have been reporting these smolts from all the beats, along with a few nice brownies, best around 10 inches, and an odd grayling.  Fly hatches are just now starting to build, I saw more Grannom on the Lyd this morning than I have done so far for the year. Large dark olives and large brook duns are about, we are expecting the swarms of black gnats soon, and of course May is very much the fly fisher's month. David Pilkington  

One swallow doth not a summer make!

It certainly was April Fool's Day. Tim and I were working on the Tamar yesterday morning,  getting the riverbank back into fishable order after the winter floods, and there was a swallow. I looked again, expecting someone in a Jester's outfit to be playing it on a bit of nylon, but no, it really was a swallow.
The sun was out but the bitter east wind cut like a knife. Just briefly, while digging silt out of a flight of steps, in a very sheltered spot, I shed my coat, and contemplated shedding my jumper. Standing back in the wind on top of the bank admiring my work, I was glad I didn't.
Down beside the water, in the sun and out of the wind, new growth of nettles and celandines was thrusting hopefully upwards. A pair of grey wagtail flitted about, hoping for a hatch of fly, rather like the anglers. On Easter Saturday we saw a peregrine carrying some unfortunate songbird, being given serious grief by a pair of ravens.
There does seem to be some faint hope of this present arctic blast moving elsewhere by next week. The trout and the anglers will all be very grateful. David Pilkington.

New Rods for a new season...

We've just received a huge box of rods from Sweden... Guideline's new Exceed range.
We tried some of the switch rods and smaller double-handers at the end of last year and we were very impressed. The trout and sea trout rods have just arrived. First impressions are very good indeed; not too 'pokerish' like many modern rods. These actually feel like 'proper', honest fishing rods and not just for the distance casting competitions! The 9ft, 9ft 6in and 10ft 7wt models should be spot on for sea trout. Please can we now have some mild weather in which to try them?

As a special introductory offer, we are giving £10 off any Exceed rod.

You can see the whole range, prices and more info here:

Guideline Exceed Fly Rods

Spring is coming (apparently!)

Despite the rest of the country being blanketed in snow and ice, the sun is shining in Lifton today. The only hint of harsh weather is a bitterly easterly wind which is freezing the fingers while we fish.
Due to a large dose of rain last week, we have been restricted to tackling Tinhay Lake's trout, but - remarkably - these fish have been rising well to hatches of large black midges.
Earlier last week, Aidan Decadenet managed a brace of fish on a sinking line and Green Pea black lure. One of the fish was most noteworthy - a superbly-conditioned, grown-on brown trout of between five and six pounds. The trout fought like fury, but young Aidan kept his cool and landed the fish in style, which he then returned to the lake.

Aidan Decadanet with a superb Tinhay Lake brown trout.

This weekend saw a group of anglers fishing the lake, and beginner Jan Spendlove showed the boys how it's done, landing three perfect rainbows of around 1 1/2lb on a Black Buzzer. Regular fisher, youngster Dan Barnard celebrated his 11th birthday in style with two lovely rainbows to 3lb on a lure fished deep. Well done that boy!
Amazingly on Sunday 24th March, we saw two sand martins at the lake. They were working hard in the freezing cold for a few adult buzzers, but they must have wished they were still back in Africa. Pussy willow is breaking on the riverbanks, the snowdrops are now all gone, surely Spring must now be just around the corner.

End of January on the river

Watery, wintery sunshine on the Lyd. A cold grey wind from the west, and a few local boys chasing the last of the pheasants across the Tamar. Snowdrops now open, the very first of the Dog's Mercury already showing flower, and tentative shoots of wild Garlic pushing up through the flood-swept banks.
Twenty-one herons erupted from the heronry on the lower Lyd, they will pair up on Valentine's day. The cormorants gave us the slip again, but our season for them goes on until April....
Masses of water in both rivers, more rain forecast tonight. Spring, however, is definitely in the air.
David Pilkington

Happy New Year!

After what seemed like absolutely endless rain and floods, we at last have a dry day. Tim and I have been opening up a nice little spot on the Lyd, felling a few small ash trees and hacking back some brambles, to give more casting and fishing space. The ground is still completely saturated, so we had to carry all the tools, rather slow and laborious work, but it was so good to be on the river - we saw an Olive!
Yesterday we checked out the Tamar, just a walk with the gun - given the slip by a couple of cormorants, but there will be other days. Also saw 5 goosanders. Massive floods have done terrible damage, at least two ladders washed away, one of which we found at head height in a hedge. Some major erosion of banks, trees fallen in, river-bank fences totally trashed - if the ground ever does dry out, we will be busy.Most of the pools look to be still nicely fishable, we will not be able to assess it properly until the levels drop.
Purple buds shooting on an elder which we felled, and sap rising from the cut sycamores. Snowdrops are showing white tips in my garden. I shall soon want to go fishing!
David Pilkington