It stayed dry yesterday and we even got a few sunny spells during the afternoon which helped to dispel the gloomy mood which has settled on north Ribblesdale over the 'summer'.  The river has dropped enough to enable me to do the Turn Dub invertebrate check so yesterday morning found me knee deep in the river below the Tarn busy netting out riverflies.  The results I got are encouraging.  A really good spread of all the main families apart from true mayfly which we rarely see on this freestone river.  A lot of gammarus and a good haul of stone fly this time.  Most of the later were very small and I'm still not sure whether size variation is indicative of different species or a range of ages.  A bit of both I suspect.

The results are on the Zoho spreadsheet and once again if you want to be put on the share list for this just email me.

It looks as if I will be running a repeat of the 'Guess the Weight of the Fish' competition next weekend.  I was approached a few days ago by the Horton Show committee and asked if the club would be prepared to do this on show day.  So what the heck, why not?  Those of you in the vicinity of Horton on Saturday 6 September should drop by at the School where you will find the Show in full swing from 12 noon onwards.  It's a typical dales event with produce classes, handicrafts, plenty of sheep and other attractions including sheep dog trials.  This year you also get me and my fish!

It's a still, humid and overcast morning with the ever present threat of rain hanging in the air.  The river is in very good nick with enough water to make trout fishing a real pleasure.  In fact there was a sizable hatch of fly last evening which brought a lot of wild brownies to the surface to feed at the Marker pool and up towards Parker's wood.  We are promised rain later and a very wet day on Tuesday so conditions should remain OK towards the weekend once any flood abates on Wednesday.

Ian