This has to be the longest spell of decent weather we have had since May.  Once again it's dawned bright and sunny with high fluffy cloud and a decent temperature.  We had a fairly strong wind with showers in the night, but that has abated to just a light westerly breeze. 

The water temperature at 19c at the Tarn yesterday was the highest it's been all summer and this seemed to have an impact on the fish as the group who fished all day yesterday reported hard graft both from the bank and the boat.  Most success seems to be had with dry fly.  Not only does this avoid the worst of the weed, but the trout seem to be surface feeding in the warmer conditions.

I think a quick scout for mushrooms would be in order this morning after last night's rain.  We have had sporadic crops on Cow Pasture all summer in the wet conditions, but this combination of warm temperatures and morning damp should produce a decent crop.

I have been thinking about the results we got from Saturday's riverfly monitoring exercise and come to the conclusion that it's far too soon to draw any conclusions.  We really need a few years of data to be able to draw up a profile of both seasonal changes to species numbers and variety at each location, but it's reassuring to see that at all three site we have a decent spread of invertebrate species with very few that would normally indicate low water quality and most of what we do have present associated with high quality conditions.  My plan is to sample at New Inn again after we get the next flood to see what can be flushed out of the gravel bank below the bridge.  This is where we got the most abundant sample back in May, but on Saturday the water was far too low to sample here.

What surprised me was the presence of bullhead and stone loach in the sample we took at Selside together with the bullhead from New Inn.  We found a large bullhead at New Inn back in May so the implication is that there may be quite a good population of these handsome little fish in the river.

I'm off to London for a couple of days so there will be no post here on Wednesday.  Back to normal on Thursday.

Ian