[Richard Tong]

Been keeping an eye on river levels thru FishDon website and I see that Don has been high for the past week. You guys had a lot of rain or is it snow melt! Lecht has still got a full covering with all runs open. Eventually this will all end up in Don. Any estimates on when it will all have gone...is end of April too much to hope for?

Apparently this weather was common in the 1960s and earlier so some of you may be able to remember back that far!

Richard

[Ben Dixon]

It's goosed mate!!

Forecast is for fairly warm weather even up in the hills, an old man tells me that it wil probabluy be early May before the river levels become stable unless we get a heatwave in April then it will all go at once. 

Starting to piss me off abit now.

Cheers

Ben

[Noel Kelly]

Bugger I was expecting this. Looks like the locks are gonna have to get a hammering instead...

[Paul Rankine]

Hi,
        Don at Parkhill this afternoon was a raging brown torrent.
       
  Aye, it's a bugger.

Paul.

[Noel Kelly]

So what does this mean for hatches. Assuming water temps will remain low during the main snow melt does that mean we will have hatches of biblical proportions when conditions are finally right or will the early hatches like the MB,s juct not happen at all ???     

[Richard Tong]

Noel,

Everything will hatch...eventually. Nobody knows when or how the Trout will respond. Maybe the MBs will hatch (because they are hardy little buggers and thru the millenia have adapted to these conditions) during snow melt but the water temp may mean the Trout are too lethargic to respond. Will be interesting to see what happens...you locals are best placed to see and learn....

Richard

[Ben Dixon]

Noel,

Everything will hatch...eventually. Nobody knows when or how the Trout will respond. Maybe the MBs will hatch (because they are hardy little buggers and thru the millenia have adapted to these conditions) during snow melt but the water temp may mean the Trout are too lethargic to respond. Will be interesting to see what happens...you locals are best placed to see and learn....

Richard

Hi richard,

I saw trout moving in February to stoneflies with air temp of about 6 degrees unfortunately I did not take water temp. I saw one trout move last night before the water came up again and on warmer days over the past few weeks before we got this thaw there were fish moving.  I am hopeful that once (if) the water settles in the near future, we will get some good sport.  But, as per my earlier post I think the DOn will be big for some time.

Cheers
Ben

[Richard Tong]

I have been told by an angler far more knowledgeable than I that the nymphs can delay hatching till conditions are more favourable. This enables them to stand a better chance of surviving/suceeding to dun stage. All makes sense when you think about it.

I am going to go through some old Trout & Salmons' from the early 70's that I still have and see what the early season reports say. Anything interesting and I will post back.

Perhaps some older members can recall what the early season fishing was like in April in the 50's/60's when these harsh winters were the norm!

Richard

[paavo]

I´ll think if and when the MB:s will hatch, it´s much depending of water temp and if the hatch will be great or poor.
Take for example Danica, which nymph is digging and live in rivers with sandy bottom.  If the spring is late and the early summer is cold and the water temp stays low the nymph can stay over and hatch year after.

//Harri

[Alex Burnett]

Perhaps some older members can recall what the early season fishing was like in April in the 50's/60's when these harsh winters were the norm!

Richard

Richard

Winters 62-63 & 65-66 there was still conciderable snowfall in April & May in Aberdeenshire with roads still blocked,  don't however know how this affected fishing or fly life...not old enough!!!

Alex

[Richard Tong]

Guys

Just had a look at 'The Lecht' website and they are saying that all the snow has now gone apart from a few patches. Why is the river level falling so slowly ( I know it has just risen 4" as you had some heavy rain this early a.m.). Is it because there is still quite a bit of snow in them thar hills higher up, where a lot of tiny mountain streams that eventually make up infant Don are carrying the snow melt from?

Anyone measured the water temp (Ben?). That may tell a lot about the lack of response from the Trout! We have caught Trout from some pretty cold water so it would be interesting to know,

Richard

[Hamish Young]

The ground in upper Donside is saturated, which may go some way to explaining why the river drops slowly. Last nights rain wont have helped too much.
To be fair, when we've had snow such as this before, it does tend to take a while to fine down which is an advantange a bit later in the year as (with luck) the river will run at a good-ish height for longer.

There are still significant pockets of snow at the 'source', I drive over the Lecht pretty much every weekend at the moment and there's enough up there to suggest to me that (tropical 'spring' apart) it will still be there in late May.

In theory, Ben should be in Mexico about now - no doubt the water temperature will be warmer there 

H 

[Iain Goolager]

Water was 7.2 deg C today at Kintore @ 1 pm ish