Planning to fish on the Derbyshire Wye

With my favoured Welsh upland llyn fishing locations out of reach as I can’t cross the border owing to the COVID19 lockdown restrictions in Wales being quite restrictive I have been exploring alternate options. Fishing the Derbyshire Wye for wild rainbow trout has been on my To Do list for some time. However, those stretches that don’t require you to be a member of a club are a tad pricey at this time of year as the river has a phenomenal mayfly hatch. I need to brush up on my river fishing skills before I shell out that kind of cash, perhaps next year. However, there is a stretch of the Wye in Monsal Dale that you can fish on a day ticket from the Cressbrook and Litton Flyfishers Club that is much more reasonably priced.

The club have a nice introductory video on their website which includes drone aerial shots that is well worth checking out to give you an idea of the kinds of water and bank conditions you might encounter. They also have five years worth of river fly records covering adult upwing flies (ephemeroptera) and stoneflies (plecoptera). These provide a breakdown of presence by month and by beat, including the day ticket beat. This provides valuable information of the annual variability in the presence of the flies in the day ticket beat and the months that these are typically present. 

There is another really useful resource that you can now harness with this knowledge, the fly selections on the Peaks Fly Fishing website. The “Trout and Grayling Flies by” menu has two really pertinent options. The first is the option to select “by River” and choose the Derbyshire Wye. Having an idea of the flies they recommend for these rivers you can then use the selection “by Insect” using the information you have gleaned from the river fly records which allows you to select trout flies that would be used to mimic the upwing and stoneflies you are likely to encounter. Flies ordered!

Now just need to familiarise myself with the clubs health and safety and biosecurity rules, check all my gear is in tip top condition and book the beat. Check the water level (a few miles downstream) before I head off. Job done …. can’t wait!

Tight Lines

Greg