Spring News 2020
Season Outlook
Technically, March is the start of spring. Realistically, year on year it feels like winter does not want to let go. This year in particular watching the pelting rain, hearing storm after storm causing devastation does not exactly fill one with joy. The news about corona virus spreading and its impact on our daily lives has an additional burden on the way we feel. Health? Holidays? Travel? Economy?
However, there is one thing that fills me with excitement. Only a few weeks before the start of the season! From where I am sitting at the moment it will be a superb season. Let me explain why.
What drives our sport is the frequency and intensity of fly hatches, starting with large dark olives and grannom in April, continuing with mayflies in May, enjoying the small olive and blue wing olive spinner falls in summer and having good sport with sedges and pale wateries when the weather gets cooler in autumn.
It is by now scientifically proven that our flies have three main enemies. First of all accumulation of silt on the river bed, a result of run off from roads and cultivated fields. Secondly, increasing amounts of phosphates from agriculture and sewage water treatment plants. Thirdly, pesticides and other chemical compounds that may find their way into the rivers. If you add low water conditions and decreased river flows the negative effect on our fly life is exacerbated.
Not this year though. The aquifer recharge has been the earliest that I have witnessed in the last 10 years I have been working for the club. The river Till has been running in the village of Shrewton, about 3 miles North of Stonehenge, from early December and the ground […]
