We’ve had a great year’s fly fishing on The Fox & Hounds Beats on the River Taw, down here in Devon. While the salmon have eluded us for another season, the brown trout have been significantly larger than we’ve seen in recent years, and we’ve had a lot more sea trout returned.
Despite a dry summer, overall numbers of fish caught have been on a par with last year, but what’s been very noticable and encouraging has been the number of hatches and overall bug life, the increase in kingfisher, wagtails, heron and egrets, not to mention the otters and beavers. All very encouraging signs of a system in recovery and hopefully the start of a trend, rather than a just a welcome blip!
Following the spates at the start of the month, we had a week or so of very unsettled weather, but as the month progressed, the weather settled and the fishing switched on. While not matching the quality of fishing from May and June, we had a fair number of mid-teen returns, some more smaller sea trout and several run-ins with much, much larger fish.
Over on the Torridge, they had a fantastic end to the season with more than 20 good size sea trout, and more than half a dozen salmon in the closing days, and elsewhere on the Taw, sea trout and salmon catches were also up.
For the month we had 172 brown trout and 2 more sea trout, bring the totals for the year on the hotel’s Taw beats to 1,267 brown trout and 13 sea trout. It seems unfair to blame Tom for the 0 salmon count, but in the spirit of Tom vs Matt, that’s not going to stop me. Being snapped off after 3 minutes of excitement on 16lb tippet just seems like poor planning. Santa will be delivering some 20lb tippet for the stocking this Christmas, with a reminder that, while they may be rare, there are some big fish in the smallest of waters!
September Flies & Fishing
September ended up being reminiscent of July in terms of the flies that worked best. Sedges and black nymphs caught the most fish, while small mayfly patterns, GRHEs and lures accounted for most of the remaining catches.
We had the occasional days where small gnat patterns and APTs worked best, and a few fish came up to Stimulator patterns, but the Elk Hair Caddis would bring fish to the surface when nothing visible was rising, with the black nymph taking care of things below the surface.
Unlike the black bodied Elk Hair Caddis of July, light coloured or orange bodies were the ticket for September, more closely resembling the Caperer and Cinnamon Sedge caddis species more prevalent in September.
We didn’t experience a lot of hatches, but there were a few hatches of small species including what appeared to be BWOs, Small Spurwings, and Iron Blues which made for some good fishing once matched.
As the month progressed, lure patterns, particularly black/yellow on fast retrieves produced a decent numbers of brownies while searching for sea trout – as well as a couple of sea trout.
September certainly put us through our paces. At the start of the month an afternoon’s fishing saw torrential downpours one moment, followed by clear blue skies the next. We tried 4 inch flies for salmon and size 22 gnats for quiet browns. And we had days of hard fishing for a single fish and days where we’d catch four fish in four casts.
The last week was particularly lovely and a great way to end the season. The low September sun creating rich deep colour, combined with the turning leaves and warm days made it a pleasure to be on the river.
Bug Life
The September rise in water levels made harder to reach the stones and lies where nymphs have been living throughout the summer. Generally we were seeing very small juvenile nymphs only a millimetre or two in size. Almost all of the mayfly we saw were of the smaller species with bodies around 4-6mm.
While not notably more prevalent in numbers, the sedge patterns like the Elk Hair Caddis would bring fish up quite regularly when nothing was rising, whereas the mayfly patterns really only caught fish when mayfly were present and fish were feeding. In addition to the usual midges, we saw two species of stonefly and caught a few fish on Stimulator patterns. We also saw a few lacewings floating down the river, but didn’t note any rises for them.
While not as noticeable as in the reservoirs, there seemed to be some move towards fry as we had several fish caught while stripping lures for sea trout. Black and yellow, black and silver and black and red all caught brown trout.
Now we have that long wait until March and the 2026 opening. In the meantime we’ll be tying flies, chatting on the forums and maybe even get in a bit of grayling fishing. It’s looking very likely that we’ll have a very special fishing weekend in late March conjunction with some great partners. We’ll be making an announcement before the end of the year, so if that sounds like something you might enjoy, keep an eye on our Offers and Events page, or sign up to our Newsletter to be notified.
We hope your season was as enjoyable as ours and look forward to brining you updates in the new season. Tight lines!
September Fly Fishing Gallery
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