I had a nice little plan of what I was going to write for this piece. Just a little pre-season preamble of what we expect to see when the season opens; some fly predictions and pictures of the insects; and a quick little report of the opening two days (pretty rough).
None of that Tom vs Matt nonsense. We’ve put all of that competitive malarky behind us and planned a cooperative and supportive season of relaxed and peaceful fishing.
Then a couple of hours ago my phone started pinging with a succession of fish photos culminating with this beautiful 16” beast he landed right at the bottom of the grounds.
So fine. Gauntlet thrown, challenge accepted. No peace this season it seems!
Last year we each chose five flies to fish with each month. While we weren’t always right, it was a great exercise to focus our thinking about what was happening on the river. This year we’re trying a couple of other things. Firstly we’ll be co-opting in some additional expertise to put together a suggested fly box for different times of the year to give guests a better idea of what locals are tying on.
We’re also going to dive deeper into the natural diet of our brown trout on the Taw. In a similar way that we predicted flies last year, we’ll be looking ahead at the expected hatch calendar and looking for evidence of the nymphs that will eventually hatch. We’ll try to keep that light on these posts and perhaps have another series that digs deeper into entomology for those who are interested.
Conditions
Water conditions as of the middle of March are closing on ideal. Rain four days ago saw a 60cm rise and it’s been falling and clearing since then. We’re currently standing at 0.5m at Newham Bridge (the station we use for our relative water height) and the water will continue to slow as it drops through 0.4 in the coming days.
At the same time, it’s warming up. We have five glorious sunny days ahead of us and when we were out today doing measurements for the Westcountry CSI programme, the temperature was 11.1 Celsius. So another degree or two and we’ll be getting to optimal temperatures.
We’re also seeing a few more flies over the river, including a couple of decent Grannom hatches. We’ve even spotted the occasional rising fish, but most of the life we’re seeing is sub-surface .
While Tom and I did manage to get out on the first and second days of the season respectively, it was tough and quite cold and we both blanked. We did pick up a few decent brownies while swinging salmon flies in early March, notably on cascades and stoats tails (apparently these pre-season fish don’t count, according to the man who only caught one) but Tom’s recent performance gives us hope for a reasonable early season.
Bug Life
In 2025 we started taking more of an interest in the specific species of invertebrates of our local waters, and particularly those found on our beats on the River Taw, here in Devon. Part of this stemmed from tying flies to better match the hatch, but perhaps more importantly was identifying specific species to be able to better judge and monitor the quality of the water, based on the different tolerances to pollution.
This year we’re taking a more systematic approach. We’re creating a calendar of the hatches we expect to see each month (kind of a Bug Birthday list) and for each one, we’ll be looking for evidence of adult nymphs, as well as the hatches themselves. We believe we may have 24 of the 50+ species of Mayfly in the UK here on the River Taw, and have positively identified half of these with reasonable levels of confidence. We also started a similar exercise with Caddis and Stonefly species and other invertebrates, but the Mayfly continues to be the focus.
For our March mayflies, we’re on the lookout for nymphs of four species. Firstly we have two Heptageniidae:
- March Brown (Rhithrogena germanica), pictured on the right below
- Large Brook Dun (Ecdyonurus torrentis), the bigger guy on the left
While each of these have all of the visible characteristics to identify them as the species we’re looking for, for full disclosure, each could actually turn out to be at least one other species of mayfly. But given their maturity and time of year, we’re pretty confident they’re the beasties we’re looking for.
In terms of numbers, there are a lot of Ecdyonurus nymphs around right now. They account for 60-70% of the nymphs we’re seeing. But for every 20 of these, we only see one of the March Brown nymphs. So while definitely have March Browns around, and we’ve seen several hatched, they still represent a fraction of their bigger cousin.
We’re also looking for two Baetidae, both of which can be found nearly year round:
- Large Dark Olive (Baetis rhodani)
- Small Dark Olive (Baetis scambus)
The Baetis species are much harder to positively identify without a microscope. The largest of these are smaller than 10mm at maturity and can be as small as 5mm.
Characteristics such as the number and size of visible gills, tail length and tail colouring are consistent with what we’d expect to see in Large and Small Dark Olives, but these could match other baetids known to be in the system and expected as early as April.
We haven’t seen any evidence of either of these as adults yet and indeed, the number of baetid nymphs of any size is lower than we anticipated. That said, there are a lot that are only 2-3mm, so we may see more later in the season.
We’ve also had a couple of surprises. We saw far more Green Drake (Ephemera Danica) nymphs than we expected to. Normally we see these in the slower water buried in the silt and decaying vegetation. Almost every sample we took from almost every type of water flow had several of these beautiful large nymphs (left below).
The other nymph that occurred frequently was the Turkey Brown (Paraleptophlebia submarginata). I was very excited to find this as it wasn’t one we had positively identified last year and only has records from the Little Dart. So excited in fact, I posted it on Instagram (shout out to the two people who liked my post, and apologies to my wife for using the hotel Instagram page to post ‘bug pics’).
We’ve had a few decent Grannom hatches already and have seen free swimming, net making and case building caddis nymphs in our samples. We have many species of stonefly known to be in the Taw and several of these nymphs appear to be getting close to maturity. We’ve learned to keep these in separate samples, as they have a tendency to snack on anything nearby!
There have been a good number of Gammarus (fresh water shrimp) spotted as well damsel nymphs and Asellus (fresh water louse) in the margins. While we’ve never had much luck with imitations of these, perhaps we’ll give it another go this year. As far as the air goes, we’re mostly seeing midges with the occasional mayfly or sedge hatch, mostly between mid-morning and mid-afternoon.
Flies and Fishing
With all the bug life we’ve seen, especially under the surface, we could be forgiven for hoping that the fishing would be pretty good. As I get towards the end of this article, we’re nearing the end of March and sadly it’s been a bit lack-lustre.
Things were notably better when we had the warmer weather two thirds through the month. Generally anglers have been catching in ones, twos and threes. We’ve had a few returns of half a dozen, but just as many blanks.
Unfortunately the weather hasn’t had the upturn we saw in the last third of March last year where temperatures were in the 15-17 mark. This year we’ve seen highs in the 10-14 range.
We’ve had a few fish taken on dries, most notably Elk Hair Caddis and parachute style mayfly imitations. Most of the fish have been taken on nymphs, either bouncing along the bottom, fished in tandem with a dropper or click and dink style. Gold Ribbed Hairs Ear has been the top performer, but there has been little consistency. Cycling through the box has been the name of the game. From size 6 streamers down to size 20 gnats, and everything in between, it’s been rare to catch more than one or two fish consecutively on the same fly.
Part of the reason this article was delayed was getting ready for the Trout & Salmon Spring Gathering, held here at the hotel over the weekend of the 27-29 March. We had some incredible speakers and exhibitors with 80 anglers joining us to share and enjoyable weekend, highlights of which can be seen in the Trout & Salmon weekend gallery.
There was a lot of great information shared and we look forward to putting some of what we learned into practice as the weather warms up and the fishing starts to switch on. We hope you can join us for some fishing here in Devon in 2026. Fishing can be added to any stay on an ad hoc basis and we have two fishing packages. Our Fishing Break is a Dinner Bed & Breakfast package that includes fishing for £165/night, while our Ultimate Fishing Package combines a stay in our Luxury Treehouse with fishing. Both can be booked online or by contacting the hotel.
March Fly Fishing Gallery
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