Flies for the Severn - what would you use?

[severnfisher]

This is my first post having been 'lurking' for a bit.

First off I'd like to say what an interesting site this is.

What I wanted to do was pose a question to the anglers out there about what flies to use on my local river Severn.

Traditionally the Severn is a bait fishery. There are no salmon flies that 'belong' to the Severn like the neighbouring rivers have the Usk Grub or the Wye Bug.

In recent years a very small band of anglers have been fishing the fly for salmon on the middle river below Shrewsbury.

I could list a few patterns that I know have worked from time to time, but it would be interesting to hear what anglers who fish rivers with much higher stocks of fish would reach for.

Most of the time, even in dead low water the river has a peaty/sandstone tinge. This 'black tea' effect can suddenly become very pronounced during a release of reservoir water something which happens quite regularly in the summer months.

I thought it might also be useful to provide a picture of what the river looks like during summer low water which is the only time a lot of water is physically fishable with the fly.

i7.photobucket.com/albums/y282/Tomrigby/IMG_0662.jpg

Go on, what would you use and why?

Tom

[tyneandrew]

Tom,

Looks quite clear in low water so one would probably opt for something along the lines of a stoats tail or silver stoat.

If it comes up and gets dirty then get something bigger and brighter on - perhaps something like the flys that speyvalley has posted on a recent thread?

Don't know much about the Severn - what is the annual salmon catch roughly?

p.s - if your desperate then you could always try a spinner ;D

Andrew

[severnfisher]

Hi Andrew,

About 250 reported.

[easky]

As Andrew says when the water colours up use brighter flies with yellow, orange and gold in them.

For instance you could try the ever popular Allys Cascade as it seems to fish well just about everywhere.

Another patterns that works well in coloured water over here in Ireland is the Silver Wilkson.

tight lines

E

[charlieh]

That clear, greenish water looks not unlike the Wye when it's in reasonable fly order. Since they're so close, and probably not dissimilar in character, I'd suggest that what works there might be a reasonable starting point for the Severn. That's only a guess, though.

In the summer, my go-to fly for the Wye is an Usk Grub, though the guy I fish with there (who probably knows it as well as anyone alive) uses a Lady Caroline as his first choice. Both of these are flies with fairly subdued, natural colourings. Fairly small flies seem to work in summer - sizes 8 & 10 are most common.

If the water is a bit dirty, I'd use a slightly brighter version of a shrimp fly - my regular fly is something between a Bann Special and a Black Shrimp.

If you get a bit of algae in the water, a fly with a bit of yellow seems to show up, but on the whole I don't really like very bright or flashy flies on the Wye.

[severnfisher]

Thanks for the input. I haven't had enough success on the fly on the Severn to make any worthwhile generalisations from my own fishing.

But what I do know from both my own and other anglers' results is that popular and reliable flies like Willie Guns, Ally's Shrimps and Cascades all produce fish but so do more sombre patterns i.e. Foxford shrimp. I don't know of silver and silver/blue flies scoring in daylight which is odd really given the historic popularity of the Blue and silver Devon on the middle reaches. I tend not to use a silver body as it normally produces a chub and then another and then another....

But the real issue is that there are so few anglers fishing the fly (I know of only one other on my 'local' twenty miles or so and only a few more a wee bit further up) that we only have our own results to go by. Perhaps that is a good thing though because we are immune to the tyranny of the bankside telegraph.

Two further questions;

The average size of the salmon in the Severn is pretty big as the run is mainly MSW fish. Is it a tactical mistake to use the really small flies and micro tubes etc associated with low water summer grilse fishing when fishing low water for their bigger brothers and sisters? My own experience tends to suggest this, but again not enough success to make any definite conclusions.

Does anyone know why fly fishing didn't establish itself on the Severn?

Tom

[toucan]

You have an interesting project ahead of you!

I am sure there was a history of salmon fly fishing on the Severn - I'll see if I can find some early references to successful flies, perhaps among the recommendations of Francis Francis. The reason it didn't establish more of a following probably lies in the relative quality compared with the Wye. The Wye has many miles of excellent fly fishing water (even if the numbers of fish are a tiny fraction of what they were) and is spared the boat traffic of the Severn.

I would suggest that flies that work well on the Usk and Wye (both still predominantly MSW fisheries) will also do well on the Severn. So try Usk Grub, Munro, Thunder, GP, Ally Shrimp, silver stoat, Willie Gunn. I like a Torrish on the Wye in spring with a bit of colour in the water.

Good luck!

Mark

[betanut]

severnfisher said:

Does anyone know why fly fishing didn't establish itself on the Severn?
Tom

No reason why it shouldn't have as there's some cracking water on the Severn, but the problem may actually be historical

To qualify that (more years ago than I care to remember) I once worked with the Welsh NRA as an 'ad hoc' Bailiff based near Chepstow. The Severn lads said they didn't have a problem with poachers - but we had some 'intelligence' gathered and knew different. A joint 'op' was organised and the upshot was 5 collars on one night on a 200yard stretch, gill netting. The guys had been on patrol/stakeout for 45 minutes
So there was (is???) a substantial poaching problem on the Severn.
I chatted with few 'legit' anglers on the Severn the following week who were all spinning - none had ever fly fished. I spoke with some guys in 'local' tackle shops who said that the Severn had a reputation for being poached and really it had driven all but the most ardent of salmon fly fisherman away. Because of the amount of coarse fishers in the area who had expanded their interest bait fishing and spinning were the preferred methods.

A lot might have changed since then (ahemmm almost 20 yrs ago now ) but it might be plausible as an explanation as to why fly fishing declined on the Severn. I was told there was a history of anglers from the Wye also fishing the Severn.
Perhaps it's something of the Dee/Don thing in that one river is something of a celebrity river and very well known world wide for it's salmon fly fishing; the other hardly spoken of by comparison - but that doesn't mean it's not any good

I'll email a couple of my old contacts from that part of the world and see what they can dig up on fly fishing history on the Severn.

[severnfisher]

Thanks for the contributions.

Toucan and Betanut are both right. What I should have said is there is not much recent (post 1945) history of fly fishing.

I notice that the latest T&S has an excellent article by Mark Walsingham based around an interview with an eye-witness to the capture of the Attingham Salmon way back in 1912. In his account the giant fish was taken on a fly and not from the Tern/Severn confluence but further downstream.

That article also has some very interesting statistics on the decline of the rod catch on the Severn from 1910 to 1930 a fall from 33,000 to less than 5,000. The causes of the decline are listed as pollution with the worst offender sewage discharge from Gloucester, over-fishing by the nets and the construction of the weirs.

This relative decline of the Severn salmon fishing in relation to the neighbouring Wye in the first quarter of the last century, plus the development of transport and communications, the proximity of the river to the west midlands industrial conurbation and rising living standards must have all led to a change of angling focus for the Severn with it becoming a bastion of coarse match angling.

With the exception of the upper river Salmon fishing was more or less restricted to a few reliable areas - basically the short stretches below the weirs and a handful pools not devoted to coarse fishing contests.

Things are changing again though.

The Severn is no longer the match angling venue it was. Thirty years ago summer and autumn weekends would see most of the river from Gloucester to Shrewsbury booked for contests. Today match angling only continues in small pockets with 95% of midlands match anglers going to commercial carp pools rather than the rivers. The number of non-match coarse anglers on the river is also in decline (outside of a crazy few weeks from June 16th till the factory fortnight ). The river will remain for the foreseeable future a coarse fishing venue and the severn catch is still low, but it is an interesting prospect.

Tom

[severnfisher]

Dave,
I live in Bewdley and Dowles Ford is just 15 minutes walk across the fields from my house. It is a fine looking bit of water. Hope this brings back memories.

i7.photobucket.com/albums/y282/Tomrigby/100_0223_edited.jpg

The area has a reputation locally as somewhere that used to be a good spot for salmon. When the EA monitoring station was built work was done on the water just below the ford which altered the flow of the river and changed the nature of the bed. Was that before or after the catches you describe?

Tom

[severnfisher]

A very tempting bit of brownie water that is up the brook. Not just young lads who feel the pull of it.

There are still a few brownies about on the ford and the one below town too and some of them are still quite big, but 2 1/2 on the dry fly is something very special.

Tom

[severnfisher]

A question to Charlie and any other Wye fly fishers: do you get different green and brown algae blooms?

Tom

[charlieh]

Tom, I think that in fact algae is much less of a problem than it used to be on the Wye, and in fact in low water it tends to run clearer now than in the past. It's quite some time since I've seen a bad bloom and I'm afraid I don't know the biological details, but from memory the bloom would be greenish when it was in full swing, but would turn brown as it tailed off.

I think the algae may have been green when alive, and turned brown when it died. Because the middle Wye is so slow flowing, it could take quite a considerable time to clear through the system, even after the water's natural balance was restored, so the brown colour would remain for some time after the bloom.

[severnfisher]

???Didn't know it was just different stages of the same process.

We had a really bad bloom in late May/ early June 2005 on the Severn, the Teme suffered more last year which was very frustrating as being able to observe fish in their lies is one of the attractions of the Teme in late spring/early summer.

[sewin]

charlieh said:

Tom, I think that in fact algae is much less of a problem than it used to be on the Wye, and in fact in low water it tends to run clearer now than in the past. It's quite some time since I've seen a bad bloom and I'm afraid I don't know the biological details, but from memory the bloom would be greenish when it was in full swing, but would turn brown as it tailed off.

I think the algae may have been green when alive, and turned brown when it died. Because the middle Wye is so slow flowing, it could take quite a considerable time to clear through the system, even after the water's natural balance was restored, so the brown colour would remain for some time after the bloom.

I agree with CharlieH on this. its green then dies off and goes brown. I have fished at Monmouth for many years and in recent years the water has been much clearer however the algal bloom was never a huge problem for us. Sure the water often carried a tinge of colour but it never seemed to affect the fishing.

On the main theme of this thread, "Rubber" Morgan who was a ghillie in the 1960s and one of the best salmon anglers I've ever seen on the Wye, invariably used a Durham Ranger for summer salmon and grilse of which he caught enormous numbers.

Back to the Severn, does anyone remember the Terry "Tightlines" Thomas programme showing salmon fishing from a boat on the Severn at Atcham or Arley I think? The boat had a concrete weight on a pulley at the bow and this was raised and lowered to move the boat down the pool below one of the fords. Some Wye boats also used this method.

[severnfisher]

Just a quick update.

This year the fly fishing in my section has been hampered by the high and coloured (as in potter's clay) water that we had for most of May.

Results so far:

Usk grub: a fair bit of interest,a bump and a long distance catch and release.
Lady caroline, Red Francis, Cascade and Green Bodied Willie Gunn tube have all solicited interest, but the only fly that has caught a salmon so far was a.... #4 medicine.

Interesting this as it was my first success on the severn on a slim line silver bodied pattern. Previous fish have fallen to shrimps or little tubes with natural squirrel.

Tom

[severnfisher]

End of season report from fly fishing the Severn.

7 on the fly. 5 released, two taken.

Biggest a coloured cock fish around 15/16lb released.

#4 Medicine 1
3/8th inch Yellow Dolly 1
#12 Icelandic shrimp (honey dun grizzle variant) 1
1 1/2 inch Silver Blue tube 4

So five fish on silver flies. Six caught after sunset. A neccessary adaption to the low and very clear water.

Full-blooded sea trout tactics proved best option by a long way in terms of offers per rod hour.

Know of two other fly caught fish both falling for smallish slightly more traditional salmon tube flies in the gloaming.


Thanks very much for ideas and inspiration.

Tom

[sewin]

severnfisher said:

End of season report from fly fishing the Severn.

7 on the fly. 5 released, two taken.

Biggest a coloured cock fish around 15/16lb released.

#4 Medicine 1
3/8th inch Yellow Dolly 1
#12 Icelandic shrimp (honey dun grizzle variant) 1
1 1/2 inch Silver Blue tube 4

So five fish on silver flies. Six caught after sunset. A neccessary adaption to the low and very clear water.

Full-blooded sea trout tactics proved best option by a long way in terms of offers per rod hour.

Know of two other fly caught fish both falling for smallish slightly more traditional salmon tube flies in the gloaming.


Thanks very much for ideas and inspiration.

Tom

Not a bad effort at all Tom, what sort of rod hours input do they represent?

[severnfisher]

Hi Sewin,

If we count rod hours when there were fish in the bit of the river I was fishing, the water temp was below 20c and the other water conditions were 'right' then about 8 hrs per fish. If you count the rest of the time when conditions were rock hard, there were no fish, or I was 'prospecting' then it would be one fish for 60hrs or so.

So a hundred and ten hours for seven fly caught fish. That figure doesn't reflect time on the river as I wasted a lot of time baitfishing in seriously poor conditions/locations for zilch and spinning in high water for just two fish.

Tom