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Thursday 21 November 2013

The Eden season so far.

The run of salmon for the early part of the season did not match anywhere near the numbers and quality of the remarkable spring of 2012 unfortunately. The water conditions were good during that period although the temperatures were very much on the low side around freezing for much of the spring. There were certainly fish running through the lower beats early on especially in April and May, those who were out fishing did have some sport.

The brown trout fishing was very good with the ample hatches of olives and grannom giving plenty of surface activity from March to May.

As the spring rolled into summer the higher temperatures arrived along with a prolonged dry spell. These conditions curtailed any notion of sport during the middle of the day with the low water, evenings and early in the day were the order of things for quite some period. It had been a few years since we experienced a "proper summer" in Cumbria, as the water temperature climbed into the early seventies with no fresh water to cool things down, the sport grinded to a halt. Many salmon stayed in the lower tidal reaches in the deeper pools going back and forth with the tides with some travelling at night, not the best place for a fish to be in the estuary at that time of year. There was some decent sea trout fishing into dark with almost perfect conditions for that, many good brown trout of two pound plus were obliging at that time also. It was good to see that the sea trout still have a future on the Eden, with all the previous wet summers the conditions have not been that favourable for night fishing.

There were salmon spread throughout the lower and middle beats of the river by July, but it would be August before there was any decent rainfall to get temperatures cooled down in the sixties and fish moving again. There certainly were numbers of fish moving during that period but were proving very hard to tempt possibly due to the warm water. It was a relief to see better numbers of grilse in the river this year compared to last and there seemed to be plenty of them. As August turned into September the drought conditions reappeared once more and sport again slowed, this continued throughout the month and to the end of the season.

It is very easy to be a little pessimistic on the fishing this season, much of it has been due to the conditions as it always has been anywhere you go. We certainly are not alone in that respect, most every other river in the U.K has seen very similar problems this year, I very much look forward to 2014 and all that comes with it.