Out of the Blue

Last year's drought hit us hard, with little optimism for this season's run of sea trout, due to low survival rates, predation etc in very low flows. However, the sea trout obviously had other ideas, and are running in droves. Since June 16th, we have already caught 103 sea trout, and so far every last one has been released to spawn and run again. A few pictures to whet your appetite...

Coming in off the spring tide.

Anticipation on the stroll along the Lyd in the fading light.

Watching the weir for signs of running fish in the last of the day.

Setting with the sun, the new moon means spring tides and running fish.

A fortnight later, the lunar eclipse, full moon rising but only half of it showing!

Tackling up in the gloaming

The prize, a bar of silver.

Bruno Vincent with his first night-caught sea trout, a very hard-fighting two-pounder.

A bright fresh school peal out of Clare's Pool on the Lyd.

June Update

Trout fishing has been rather good throughout June. There have at times been excellent hatches of fly and our guests have enjoyed some of the best Mayfly action of recent years.

Summer is now in full swing and the seatrout are running hard every night. To date we have had 26 fish from our waters. The first school peal have been caught and we expect the bulk of our run to begin to appear any night. Exciting nights and tired days lie ahead.

There has been some excellent dry fly action for hotel guests over the past month.

A tiny Olive spinner. When your size #20 is just too big!

Squadrons of mayfly spinners on the Tamar

Floating down mid dance

Dusk at Hartley weir

Thomas Crockett patiently waiting for the last light to drain from the corners of the sky 

Jupiter peeping over the Lyd valley on a clear night

Hard run seatrout

Silver under red light

Mayflies hatching, trout rising. Does it get any better than this?

May has been quite dry, with rivers dropping steadily. Fly hatches have been variable, but the mayfly are now in full swing, and the trout responding nicely, as the videos below will show.

This beauty fell for a dry Deer Hair Emerger

Mayflies were not the only ephemerids around.

A Yellow May Dun, Heptagenia Sulphurea.

The vibrant colours of the new beech leaves give the countryside that clean fresh look which typifies May, and the start of summer

The Jingler is a great all-round fly for imitating most of the olives.

There have been some very nice-sized trout around, with plenty of fish in the nine to eleven inch bracket.

A mayfly pattern in the jaws of a ten-incher.

Any serious entomologists out there who can identify this one?

We know what this is! Ephemera Danica, a female sub-imago,perfectly reflected in the Tamar.

Late March, and the trout season is open!

A few dry days, and a decent spell of sunshine, have transformed our little world at Lifton. Storms Freya and Gareth, with floods of 9 and 8 feet respectively, are but a distant memory. March is always too early to really expect to catch very much, but who can resist a few casts in weather like this? An odd fish was rising on Beat 6A, with some Grannom and a few Large Dark Olives hatching. One can be forgiven for thinking that, having been left unmolested by anglers for the winter, the fish would be gullible, but in the clear and lowish water with bright sun and no leaves yet on the trees, they needed a light touch, as befits a truly wild creature. To rise anything at all was a magic experience.

A brook lamprey working the shallows on the Tamar. Then David fishing dry fly on the Thrushel, and Alex in action on the Wolf.

Minus 2 degrees C at Lyd Foot, 6.00 a.m. 

A nice grayling from the Tamar, on the deliciously simple and effective dry Deer Hair Emerger

Beat 6A on the Wolf, David concentrating on his fly.

A sea trout smolt from the Tamar. With any luck he will be back by the end of July as a school peal, having quadrupled his weight. Note the red adipose fin of the 'trutta', and the distinctive black edge to the tail.

Purple Toothwort along the Wolf. Very few of our guests ever see this spectacular flower, which has no stem or leaves, just flowers emerging direct from the root mass. It is parasitic on the roots of alder and willow, and is over and shrouded by faster-growing plants before the trout fishing really gets going.

A lovely view up the Thrushel below the Wolf junction on Beat 6A. A cold north wind belies the bright spring sunshine, but it was extremely pleasant to be back fishing again after the close season, and a weekend in London.

David and Alex on the Arundell Arms stand at the London Fly Fair. A very busy couple of days in the city.

Alex's Hardy Bougle reel, complete with silk line, on the butt of his Hardy CC de France cane rod, nicely framed by the blackthorn blossom.

Invasive Non-Native Species

The North American mink was brought to Britain in the mid-20th century to be farmed for its valuable fur. Equipment failure, accidents, and  smash-and-release raids by animal rights thugs soon found large numbers of these creatures loose in our countryside, and with no natural predators they bred and spread throughout the land. As a water bailiff in the late 1960's, part of my job was to trap and shoot mink, and to advise landowners how to operate the traps which were loaned from the Cornwall River Authority. The Ministry of Agriculture had conveniently passed the responsibility on to the CRA, as they soon found that they had neither the time nor resources. CRA reached the same conclusion, one of the bailiffs with whom I worked trapped 90 in 3 months, and simply gave up. It was not possible to go fishing without seeing a mink, they were absolutely everywhere, using the rivers as conduits, but ranging far and wide. My wife, as a schoolgirl, asked her father what was the pretty little blue thing down by the chickens, and their farm was a good half mile from the Tamar and on top of a hill.

Fast forward to 2019, we now have a thriving otter population (in the 60's they were bordering on extinction in Britain) and for certain this has affected the mink. However there are still a few about, and in areas yet to refill with otters they are still a problem. David Pilkington

This is a 'blue' mink, a colour much prized by the fur farmers, the normal colour being a very dark brown, often with a few white flecks on the upper chest. This chap appeared in front of me while waiting for a cormorant to do much the same on the Tamar last Saturday morning. I had to make a snap decision as to whether it was or not a small otter, but the non-tapering tail and swimming style gave him (it was a dog mink) away. The effect of 36 grams of 4-shot at very close range is apparent.

A false Spring?

The last few days have certainly fooled us all into thinking that Spring has well and truly sprung. Yellow Brimstone butterflies on the wing, Grannon on the rivers, and even some fish rising, inspired David and Alex to head out with dry flies Alex had 2 grayling from the romantically named Factory. pool on beat 2 of the Lyd, on dries on Friday afternoon, prompting David to take up the challenge on the next day on the Tamar. Having sat in a stuffy meeting all morning it was a breath of fresh air in every sense. 

Let nobody be deceived by the present lovely weather. Remember that the Great Blizzard of 1891 started on the 9th of March. It filled Tavy Cleave with snow level from hilltop to hilltop, and that summer there was still snow on the Moor on midsummer's day. And of course, only this time last year, we were enjoying the 'Beast from the East'.

Tracks in the muddy sand beside the Tamar show where a moorhen and an otter have passed recently.

David releasing a ten-inch grayling from just above the gauging weir on Beat 9, taken on a small dry Deer Hair Emerger.

The video below shows rising grayling, and some wonderfully inept fishing  skills.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident".

Alexander Jones and David Pilkington looking suitably smug with their woodcock. The self-evident truth is that all 3 woodcock shot that day were killed by chaps wearing ties and breeks, is it just pure coincidence that these sporting little birds allowed themselves to be shot by those who were correctly attired?

The right load, 28 grams of 7 shot.

January has at last dried up a little, making a day rough shooting so much more pleasant. After over a month of heavy floods, grayling fishing has once again become a reality. 27 have so far been caught since Christmas, with pride of place going to Jon Barnard, top rod with a catch of 6 in a morning, topped by an absolute cracker of 16 inches. The fish came from the rough water at the neck of Donkey pool on beat 3 of the Lyd, and proved quite a handful in the strong flow.