I managed to sneak a couple of hours at a local Thames tributary this afternoon. When I last saw it, I was chub fishing and it was full of angry, brown water. What a difference! It is once again sparkling clear and thick with lush vegetation and flowering hawthorns. Even better - the mayflies were hatching



There was a slight problem, however - about this time last year I managed to accidentally tip away almost all my dry flies, and then I forgot all about it. So, I get to the stream to see rising trout and spent mayflies to find - no mayfly immitations! Aaaargh!

I managed to fool a little brownie into thinking a white wulf was a small mayfly, but he was far too quick for me, and spat it out in disgust before I could make contact. Another one did the same to a dry sedge. All they wanted was mayflies, and I was severely handicapped My meagre offerings were consistently ignored.

However, I did level the score slightly. I managed to inch very close to a rising trout and cunningly dropped a daddy right on its nose, and it sipped it in before it could suss my trick. A very lively fight ensued on my little 6' 6" #2 rod, and I remembered why I love fly fishing so much



Several more trout ignored my non-mayflies, until I found a good fish feeding enthusiastically, head-and-tailing and just breaking the surface, looking like he was snapping at emerging nymphs. I got into a good casting position and broke out the big guns - 8ft #4! No messing about now! On went an unweighted mayfly nymph and 6" above it a little blob of floating putty. Not really cricket old boy, but drifting the nymph just under the surface had to nab this trout, surely?

A few casts later, and it did A twist of bronze under the surface and disappearing putty had me lifting into a lovely heavy, dark, rich trout - they don't grow massive in this little river, but this one was at the upper end, and put up a very hard fight, speeding up and down stream and leaping all over the place. I don't think I've ever caught such a beautiful trout in my life, really dark and pretty with huge spots. I didn't weigh him as I was keen to slip him back and make sure he was OK, but he was probably about 2lb.



That was enough for me. One on the dry and another really gorgeous one on the upstream nymph. What a lovely afternoon

Nice fish and nice pictures but, if my eyes don't deceive me that first fish is a salmon!

It does look salmony doesn't it! I think my camera is lying again. It was a nice brownie of about a pound. Most of them there look like that, the dark brown and big spots of the second one is quite unusual.

Unless I've been catching loads of salmon these last few years and didn't know about it

For a salmon, lack of spots on the gill cover (usually, fewer than 4 indicates time for a closer look!), small mouth, delicate head (compared with the other fish), a good 'wrist' to the tail and quite pointed tail 'flukes'. The spots are crosses as opposed to spots, no colour to the adipose fin.

Against a salmon, perhaps too many spots below the lateral line.

Could just be the light on some aspects but I'd certainly give it a very close look if I caught one like that over on this side of the country!

Is the river stocked?

Its the forked tail that does it Anderoo perhaps a bit of Sea Trout. I am in Devon and was fishing a lake near Totnes loads of Mayfly hatching off but nothing rising to them and I could not get a touch on the nymph either. I got everything on a size 16 olive nymph It was only then I noticed a load of pond olives hatching off as well.

Very wristy tail, too.

Just to throw a spanner in, trout-salmon hybrids are not unknown..........

Well done Andrew! I decided to go tench fishing yesterday, and then found that I had missed the tackle shop by ten minutes and couldn't get any bait. So I fished a local small stillwater for trout. They were rising to something, but were very cagey, and my evening amounted to two missed rises to hoppers and a little perch. The irony of the perch is that I caught it on a fry imitation I tied specifically for perching, but which I thought would do nicely for the large trout I had seen attacking the fry!

That suspiciously silvery salmonid looks a bit like a trout I had from Timsbury in 2008:

Apart from a chuck in a stocked pond, I've never felt the urge to have a go at fly-fishing. That, however, looks like proper fishing!

I seem to be catching more chub than trout on the mayfly is there anyway to be more specific to target trout?

Great report Anderoo, looks like fantastic fishing! N

Well done Anderoo.Nice pics,nice looking stream as well.You are very fortunate to have it

I'm really interested in the possibility some of these trout aren't brownies now - it had never occurred to me. Is is really possible that slamon or sea trout could make their way right to the centre of the country to these little Thames tributaries?

There is a fly fishing club somewhere on the river that used to stock brownies but I don't know where it is exactly, and whether there's anything to stop most of the fish getting to other stretches. I heard recently that they've stopped any stockings now as the wild trout are doing so well (there are plenty of them!).

But looking through old photos it's clear that there are 2 'types' of trout in the river - the dark brown ones with big round spots and then the more silvery ones with less pronounced spots. Below are all the photos I have of these trout (some on the fly others accidents while trotting).

I would be very interested in everyone's opinion about these fish - brownie, salmon, sea trout, or other!

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Any help?

Some corking trout there, Andrew!

Cheers Steve - brownies you reckon? I always assumed they were.

Terrific fish Andrew! I would say that most of those were Brownies, the first two pics could be Sea Trout but if you regularly catch silvery trout then I would assume that there is a strain of Brown Trout in the river that are naturally quite silvery. The odd good sized silvery trout gets caught on the stretch of the Kennet I fish and a lot of people have said they are Sea Trout. It's also possible that they are Sea trout that managed to get upriver but then got landlocked I guess but hopefully someone more knowledgeable will provide further input. An interesting question though! N

I think so - the phenotypic plasticity of brown trout is amazing, but if it has been stocked in the past it is also possible that you have more than one genetic strain living in there.

Yes, my thoughts too.

I think that all of those fish are Browns (with possibly a couple of sea trout thrown in for good measure as Nicholas S says) except the last fish. It just doesn't look very trout like! No red spots, crosses instead of black spots, forked tail with a wrist and a short mouth. The latter is a difficult one to be sure of as when the mouth's open the relative distance between eye and mouth can be hard to judge. In salmon the mouth does not extend back past the eye, in browns/seatrout it does.

Well, this has got interesting! Thanks for everyone's input. Any further thoughts from anyone?

I guess I need to take better photos and get more clued up on what to look for. I've never caught a salmon or sea trout so I wonder if I can now claim I have

Must fish that stretch sometime! It's just too far for me to travel for a day out.

the white edges to the fins of the silvery looking trout would suggest it is a brown trout, probably the colour effects are the result of the feeding combined with differring strains from stockings. Sea-trout usually have very dark fins and no white edge. (the white edge suggests to me a hint of Loch Leven in there) Trout will often travel ten or twenty miles from where they are stocked in a surprisingly short period.

I decided that the white edging was actually light reflection from the wet fins


I won't let go

Hold on..................