River continues to settle but still with some colour especially on the lower beats.   No fish reported or seen so far though some hardy optomistic souls have been out on the upper beats.   Always obvious you can't catch them when they are not there but the fact is they certainly should be by now.   The days of a 1,000 fish before the end of March are now just a sad daydream.

However when fish are present, freshish and on the take its a little like shelling peas frankly and catching them can be relatively easy.  the Spey brought that lesson home as did the season of 1988 on the Wye.  No need for expensive tackle, multiple lines, flies with ten different ingredients just a simple pattern shown to a fish will do.

I remember another afternoon on the Spey where I was gillieing for Mike Lunn the river Test keeper at the time.   We were down to fish Sourden and Mike kindly said we would share the rod.   To cut a long story short it became obvious there were plenty of fish in the tail of Sourden and Mike was soon attached to one.  He handed me the rod and I soon had one two. So it continued to the extent that more than a few minutes without a fish Mike would shout, "come on hurry up  It's my turn."   Not sure how many we had but we seemed to spend most of the afternoon playing fish.   

Fishing then was strictly 9 to 5 but I had permission to fish in the evening which I did and usually, apart from that one strange year, manage a fish or two.  As for the Wye in 1988 well that's another story