BMTF News Archives - Bintry Mill Fishery

Spring comes to Bintry

The new season is already well underway and has proved a dramatic improvement on last year.

“Normal” winter rainfall and quite abnormally warm Spring sunshine have combined to produce some exceptional early season returns of wild and over-wintered stock fish across every one of our beats. The difference between this season and the same period last year could not be more stark.

There has been a big improvement in catch returns over the beginning of last season, which was admittedly the worst for some time. The weather this April has also been far warmer and drier, although the water levels are quite low as a result.

The river is also looking particularly lovely this year, thanks in no small part to the Herculean efforts of the closed-season work parties (thank you everyone for your extraordinary support and commitment) and some significant personal contributions from individual members behind the scenes.

The Mayfly Season

The Mayfly season is largely coming to an end now, but some great days have been had and large numbers of mayflies have been seen on the river this year. Although the big hatches are over, mayfly usually continue to hatch during much of the summer on the river and mayfly patterns are always worth a try.

There are 51 different species of Mayfly in the UK. The first of these to appear (which we sadly don’t see on the Wensum) is the “March Brown”, but the most common, and which is the staple on our stretch, is the Ephemera Danica (or “Green Drake”), which has a yellowy/green abdomen with distinctive brown markings towards the tail and visible segmentation.

The Mayfly nymph

In contrast to their olive counterparts, which dart around above the floor, Mayfly nymphs are burrowers and mostly live in the silt. They have a distinctive, wiggly, abdomen with fine yellow gills (which they use to breathe) and three-pronged tails. These nymphs are prolific on all the Bintry beats and there was a very heavy showing in the fly sampling undertaken in March of this year.

With the above in mind, all you really need is a good example of a Mayfly at each of its nymph, emerger, dun and spinner stages.

Each angler will have their own firm favourite, but here are some examples of patterns which regularly feature in our catch returns and which are proven to work on our beats.

The French Partridge, a beautiful fly and a joy to tie. It really does look like the real thing. The fly takes its name from a single French Partridge feather at the front, which is palmered/hackled to give the impression of the Mayfly wing in the upright position.

The “Parachute Adams”: a classic, Klinkhammer-style, pattern with a hackled post (traditionally of calf hair), two hackles (usually brown and grizzley genetic saddle hackles), a light grey super-dry or seal’s fur dubbed body and a tail with a mixture of the longer saddle fibres.

Proctor’s Twinkle Wing is intended to represent the spent fly with horizontal, spent, wings, which can be fashioned from CDC fibres (in this case with the addition of crystal flash using the great Paul Proctor’s design).

The rest of the trout fishing season at Bintry Mill looks set to be a massive improvement over last year, particularly as we have carried out so much habitat improvement work over the winter which is now paying dividends. We are looking forward to a successful season.