Well, here we are, the last Blog of 2007.  I don't know what the weather has been like where you are , but up here in the valley it's been wet and windy all week in fact it's been so wet that the river has either been bank full or in spate most days since last Sunday.  The result is that today is really the first day since then that its been safe to do the invertebrate check at Turn Dub so my plan is to go up there later this morning and see what I can find.

The microscope that the club invested in is proving invaluable in helping to sort out some of the less obvious invertebrate families and to confirm bankside identifications of very small individuals of which I'm now finding a lot.  The size of individual creatures within families does seem to vary from month to month which, I suppose, reflects the life cycle of the different families within this cold upland river.

It will be interesting to compare today's results with the November results from the same location and begin to build a picture of whether and how fierce spates affect the presence, distribution and size of the invertebrate families.  Of course, the whole point of this is to better understand the distribution of food available to our wild trout throughout the changing seasons and to build a clearer picture of the health or otherwise of the environment in and around the river that might affect the potential of the trout to recruit and thrive.

From a sporting viewpoint the results we have obtained so far are useful.  We now know that the predominant invertebrate species below Selside are heptagenia, baetis and ephemerellidae in that order so fishing with fly patterns that represent flat bodied  mayfly, olives and BWO should at least offer our fish something with which they will be familiar, but as Arthur Ransome once said of the river at Horton the trout here see certain fly patterns so often that they become discerning experts on the skill of the fly dresser so offering something out of the ordinary may get better results from time to time.

So, I hope Farther Christmas was generous this year and your fingers are even now itching to try that new rod or reel at the marker pool, Drain Mires or Selside.  The days are slowly getting longer and it won't be long now until the new season opens.  Just think, it's 130 years in 2008 since the club started (slightly less since it came to Horton) perhaps we should mark this in some way?

Happy New Year.

Ian