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Taw River Fishing Report April 2026

The Fox & Hounds Team
May 3, 2026

Fly Fishing Report for River Taw Devon

One of these years, the weather and water gods will get together to give us perfect conditions for the early season. Last year we enjoyed a beautiful spring with temperatures in the high teens and low 20s throughout April, but had very little water until the spates in the middle of the month. This year, there’s been relatively little rainfall, but enough to keep the river at near-perfect levels for much of the month. Unfortunately the southwest has had cool temperatures and chilli winds up to the last week of April.

The cooler weather for much of the month certainly seemed to affect the hatches. The river is teaming with nymphs but we haven’t had nearly the hatch activity we expected to see and it’s not surprising that the majority of fish have been taken below the surface.

That’s not to say we didn’t see any top of the water action. There have been Large Dark Olives, Small Dark Olives and March Browns showing throughout the month, and we’ve had a few good Grannom hatches. We’ve also seen at least two distinct species of stone fly and of course Alders, and the Elk Hair Caddis has proven itself a good all rounder for these, outperforming other dries throughout April.

April Flies & Fishing

Our recent article Devon Rivers Spring Fly Box asked several experienced local anglers which flies they would choose, if they could only fish two flies for the early spring on the Taw and surrounding rivers. We had a great, but surprisingly diverse range of replies, covering everything from flies to bump along the bottom up to dries, and a great starting point for anyone fly fishing Devon rivers in early spring.

Last year the Pheasant Tail Nymph was our star performer for April accounting for close to 80% of the fish caught. This year, it’s taken some fish, but nothing like the previous year’s numbers, and overall it’s been much more of a mixed bag this seaon.

Several nymphs were named by anglers as one of their only two flies, including the GRHE and both a black and natural Pheasant Tail Nymph. The Bead Head Gold Ribbed Hare’s Ear has notably outperformed not only the other nymphs, but all other flies. That said, plenty of other flies also proved themselves throughout the month.

Early in the month streamers and salmon flies accounted for some good fish. Following the great talk by Fred Brown at The Trout & Salmon Spring Gathering, we’ve been fishing them on shorter leaders with sink tip lines and focussing on colder wetter days when the air pressure is lowest.

Spider patterns have been more prevalent this year spring than previously. Last year red-brown patterns did well but olive, yellow olive and black have been more productive this year.

Emergers such as Sparkle Duns and CDC Olive Duns have done well at times and the the Elk or Deer Hair Caddis has consistently caught fish, even when there have been relatively few Grannom around.

A few people have also used Stimulators to good effect especially when early stonefly have been showing.

Mayfly dries haven’t caught as many fish as expected given that we’ve seen a fair number of mayflies around. Quite often fished in tandem with a suspended nymph, it’s the nymph that’s been taken 19 times our of 20. As we’ve neared the end of the month, we’ve started to see better results from the dry.

Overall it’s been a very mixed bag in terms of both fishing and flies. We’ve had several mornings and afternoon hitting double digits, but 2-5 fish has been much more common. Quite often it is several hours of nothing at all and then a flurry of activity when the bite comes on.

As we get into May and the temperatures continue to climb, we’ve already started to see bigger hatches and more spinner activity over the water. We’ve also had a little top up of water so we hope to see some more dry fly action and more consistent fishing over the course of the coming month.

Buglife

So far there’s been little evidence of our newfound ability to identify species having any effect on our catch rate! Still, we’re persisting with the old entomology kick and getting much better a recognising which bugs we have on the river. The good news is that there’s a lot, and so far we’ve been able to find, and for the most part, identify the species that we’re expecting to see.

At the nymph stage we’ve been focussing on species likely to hatch in April which includes the Large Brook Duns and March Browns and the Small Dark Olives and Large Dark Olives in the mayflies, but other notable mayfly nymphs have included a lot of Green Drake (E. danica), some Turkey Browns and a few Ditch Duns.

Large Brook Dun Nymph

March Brown Nymph

Baetis sp. Nymph

E. danica (Green Drake) Nymph

Turkey Brown Nymph

Ditch Dun Nymph

Stonefly nymphs have been getting larger throughout the month and we’ve seen a variety of caddis nymphs, although we didn’t find many Grannom, despite the number of adults we saw. We found good numbers of fresh water shrimp and lots of large damsel nymphs in the margins.

On the wing we saw most of what we were expecting to see with the exception of Large Brook Duns, which should be appearing any day and have been spotted in other parts of Devon. We had a couple of surprises including great hatches of Upright Olives. We’ve known they’re in the area, but haven’t been able to to positively identify them until this year. We also saw early Yellow May Duns and have just started to see a few Iron Blues around.

The Grannom have continued to show through the first couple weeks of April, and along with the Stoneflies and Alders, have helped make the Elk Hair Caddis a good choice of dry or dry dropper.

Even when nothing else is obvious on the water, we’ve had swarms of Dance Flies (Hilara maura). The odd fish has been taken on black gnatt, APT and other black dry flies, but nothing like the number you would think if trout are actively targeting the fallen flies.

It wasn’t a terrible April by any means and we had some lovely days towards the end of the month. We can’t help thinking that if we’d had a bit more of the weather the southeast was enjoying, it would have been fantastic.

In total we had 168 wild brown trout returned in April, up slightly from last year, and we had much more regular encounters with fish over 12″ and a few 14-15″ fish as well.

May and June are our normally our best months for fishing and we hope you get a chance to come and spend some time on the river. Our Fishing Break is a Dinner Bed & Breakfast package that includes fishing for £165/night, and our Ultimate Fishing Package combines a stay in our Luxury Treehouse with fishing, as featured in Trout & Salmon Magazine last year. Both can be booked online or by contacting the hotel.