I was very lucky to get an invite from a very nice man to fish a very nice stretch (8 miles!) of the Kennet last Saturday... slap bang in the middle of the Mayfly season. Thanks Phil!
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| While tying on a spinner pattern a spinner lands on my hand! |
Actually, while there were good numbers of duns coming off sporadically the main feature was a huge spinner fall that built from about 3:30 and peaked at about 7 in the evening. The week prior, Phil tells me, there were no spinners about and the fish were focussed on the intense dun emergence.
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| Long shallow riffle heaving with mayfly and rising fish... |
I went for a pee in the woods mid afternoon and found myself in a massive mating column of mayfly. This video barely does justice to the density of the swarm.
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| Video of one of the mating columns |
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| This fish ate a dun imitation and tore off upstream, I thought Phil would be spooled! |
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| The spinner fall hots up |
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| Iron blue spinner? |
Amazingly, there were fish that were not on the mayfly but focussed on the sporadic olive/iron blue hatch (not sure which it was).
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| Close up of a piece of stream at the end of the spinner fall... unbelievable! |
