Fly fishing

By Keith Elliott

Fly-fishing is changing. Once it was the domain of irascible old buffers in tweed suits who hunted salmon in Scotland and trout (pronounced "trite") on Hampshire's chalk streams. To them, there were only four types of fish: salmon, trout, sea trout and others. Woe betide a greedy chub or dace that snatched the major's trout fly. The mere sight of a non-acceptable species dangling from his line would produce a reaction akin to seeing the memsahib feeding a fox.
It's a new world. Fly-fishing magazines are packed with features on how to angle for sea fish such as bass, pollack and mullet. One of our finest fishing writers, John Bailey, has even been encouraging anglers to try catching flatfish such as flounder and plaice with flies.
Inland, the unmentionables are now avidly pursued. I met one angler trying to catch every British freshwater fish on the fly. He only needs three (ruffe, catfish and silver bream) to complete the set.
You can now buy specialist rods and flies purely for pike-fishing. This has opened a lucrative extra income stream for several trout waters. You might wonder why a toothy predator would want to grab a bundle of feathers; you might puzzle even more why almost all the very biggest pike over recent years have been captured from trout fisheries. The British record, a 46lb 13oz pike, came from trout-only Llandegfedd Reservoir near Pontypool in 1992.
Which explains why I am off to fling a fly with records in mind. My target is not pike but perch, the fierce-looking predator fondly nicknamed "tigers". Perch should not be in trout-only waters. But, like many other coarse fish, they sneak in through overflow streams, inlets and, allegedly, through their sticky eggs attaching to birds' legs. I suspect the Perch Liberation Front may occasionally be carrying out nefarious stocking, too.
It's not all bad for resident trout. Coarse fish are prolific little breeders. Suddenly, shoals of nervous protein abound at a time when the grubs and bugs that are a trout's main food source start getting tougher to find. For a few weeks, trout gorge on the baby fish. (I guess you could call it a fry-up.)
Very few of the tiddlers survive. But a few do. Luck? Survival of the fittest? Bad taste? Who knows. If they get through the first year, they suddenly find themselves in a food-rich water with no predators. They grow fast - like the perch in Toft Newton, near Market Rasen in Lincolnshire.
Last year my friend Gareth Purnell, the editor of Total Coarse Fishing (as distinct from totally coarse fishing), caught more than 20 perch over 2lb from the "trout-only" reservoir in a couple of hours. Locals have landed some whoppers while fly-fishing, including one over 5lb. The Environment Agency, testing new kits that can identify specific species under-water, have spotted perch to 7lb. The British record is 5lb 9oz 8dr.
Unfortunately, last year the fry had gone (eaten, or hiding) by the time I got there. This year, the fishery manager, Ian Robinson, tipped me off. "The fry are here, and big fish are feeding on them." The time had come to better (double? treble?) my biggest perch of 1lb 14oz, and on a fly too.

Thanks to the Independant Online