Following on from last week, blue winged olives and the odd straggling sedge continue to provide a decent bit of daytime sport, but it’s noticeably quieter than the height of summer. Cooler mornings and shorter evenings are starting to shift the rhythm of the day, with the best fishing now concentrated into a tighter window either side of midday rather than spread right through to dusk. We’ve noticed the hatches becoming a little more predictable as the month goes on too, less of the sudden, overwhelming blizzards of fly you get in May and June, and more of a steady, reliable trickle that keeps fish interested without quite reaching the frenzy of midsummer. It makes for a more considered, technical kind of fishing, where reading the water and watching for individual rises matters more than simply covering as much ground as possible.
It’s worth making the most of these last weeks of proper summer dry fly fishing while they last. Fish have had a long season to grow wise to pressure, but the cooler water temperatures coming in with September tend to put them back on the feed with a bit more confidence than the height of the August heat allowed. We’ve found this is often one of the most underrated windows of the whole year, the crowds of mayfly season are long gone, the water has cleared and settled after the summer weed growth, and fish seem genuinely more willing to commit to a well presented fly than they were even a few weeks ago. If you’ve been holding off booking a day because of the heat, this is exactly the moment to get back out.
Following on from the early signs we mentioned back in July, grayling have continued to show well on several of our beats, and a few guests have already picked up incidental fish while targeting trout. Proper grayling season doesn’t begin in earnest until October, but these early signs are a good indicator of a strong season ahead, and we’ve seen some genuinely encouraging numbers on the stretches where we’ve been doing our riverfly monitoring work throughout the summer. The gravel clearance we did back in July seems to have paid off too, with several good fish holding in exactly the kind of clean, well oxygenated runs we were hoping to protect.
Grayling fishing on the chalkstreams has a real following of its own, often overlooked compared to the trout season, but every bit as rewarding, particularly for anglers who enjoy a technical nymphing challenge through the colder months. Unlike trout, grayling tend to shoal up in deeper pools and glides, which makes for a different style of fishing altogether, more about careful depth control and drift than the precise, single cast presentation you need for a wary chalkstream trout. If you haven’t fished for grayling with us before, it’s well worth adding to your season, and autumn and winter dates tend to book up quickly once word gets around.
As the trout season edges towards its close, autumn brings its own distinct character to the Test and Itchen. Cooler, clearer mornings, golden light on the water meadows, and a river settling into a slower, more contemplative rhythm after the business of summer. For many of our regular guests, autumn is a quietly favourite time of year to be on the bank, not necessarily for the volume of fish caught, but for the quality of the experience itself, mist rising off the water at first light, the first frosts turning the grass silver, and a real sense of the countryside slowing down around you.
We’ll have more detail on autumn and winter availability in the coming weeks, including grayling days and the usual close season maintenance work that keeps these rivers in such good health for the following spring. It’s a quieter time on our side of things too, less guiding, more of the behind the scenes work that doesn’t always make it into the newsletter, bank repairs, habitat improvement and planning for next season, all of which we’ll try to give you a glimpse of as autumn properly sets in.
That’s all from me this week, welcome to the month we locals go fishing.
Best wishes,
Dreaming of a burbling chalkstream brimming with frenzied brown trout slurping in the gunsmoke of an electric fly hatch? Your next adventure starts here!
