A happy New Year to you all and here's hoping for a better fishing year than 2011.  The past week has been a total washout with rain falling every day since the middle of December.  The river has been just off spate for days on end now and it will be interesting to see later this season what impact all this water has had on our resident brownies.

I have mentioned frequently the plans that RCCT have for placing large woody debris in the river above the confluence of Gayle and Cam becks.  The river seems to be doing its own LWD placement at present as a visit to the Settle weir webcam will show.  There is a fairly hefty tree wedged on the weir boards that the floods have brought down from somewhere.  It just goes to prove that anything we place in the river has a propensity to make its way to Lytham.  I put a fly board into the feeder beck at Turn Dub a few years ago.  Despite being anchored to a steel post with high tensile wire this vanished during a flood and was found 12 months later in a garden at Helwith Bridge.

When I was recovering from a broken leg back in 2007 I was lent a delightful little book entitled "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" by Paul Torday.  I see that this has been made into a film starring Ewan McGregor and is scheduled for release this year.  If it follows the story in the book it should be worth a watch.

Ian