The drought breaks!

Storm Bronagh swept across Devon overnight on Thursday 20th September. We recorded almost an inch of rain here at Lifton, and the moors and high ground would certainly have had significantly heavier stuff. All the rivers were in a filthy spate first thing on Friday, most of them up around a foot, and carrying all the accumulated silt and algae of the whole summer. The rain had already cleared to a few sharp but very short-lived showers, and in no time at all the levels started to fall.
David walked up to Hartley weir on Beat 3, where the Lyd was roaring over the weir, half of which had been dry land for many weeks. The salmon have taken no time at all to start moving, and a number of salmon and sea trout were leaping at the weir. All the salmon seen were well coloured, as were the sea trout, and are now moving up into the higher reaches in preparation for spawning.
Sergegs Llobanov from Latvia was here for a 50th birthday weekend,  courtesy of his daughter who is at university in Britain. He fished Tinhay lake in the morning and had 4 rainbows, but was keen to fish for real trout on a river. After lunch, having had a quick scout around to check on levels and clarity, David took him to Beat 17 on the upper Lyd which, although still fairly rattling along, had cleared to a fishable state.
A few trout were actually rising, and Sergegs was delighted to catch several trout, including his first ever on a dry fly, an Elk Hair caddis of his own tying. David could not resist a few casts on the Lyd up on Beat 20, where he landed 9 brownies, best two at 8 inches, all on a dry CDC sedge. All the fish were in lovely condition, and the bigger mature trout were obviously well on towards spawning. Careful handling and barbless hooks had them all safely back in the river in seconds.
Rain is falling again, and is forecast to do so all day and on into Sunday morning, so we are expecting rivers to rise again today and indeed tomorrow. At least the summer of 2018, very nice though it may have been for some, has well and truly ended, the parched ground has had a good soaking, and fish are ascending the system once again. We will not be sad to see the end of the drought, and wish our fish a very successful time on the redds.