Arrived at Arnfield yesterday morning to a glass flat water completely covered in rising fish, all forms of rise swirls, head and tail, sipping heads a few flyers but not many of them. Buzzers were hatching, quite a few in the air a few shucks on the water. Great

Now how do you catch the ba******...

Not interested in (my at least) CDC, shipmans, emergers, blobs, klinks not even an inquisitive nudge, not for an hour and half anyway...

Any ides on options to try when met with this please, it was like a late afternoon midge rise, never have much joy in them either....perhaps it's just me

D

I assume you were matching what was flying around. However, there can be several things that can go wrong:

1. You were not able to match what fish were taking
2. Fish were feeding on something else. It is not unusual to have mixed hatches, with huge numbers of insects flying around and you are matching those, but get no response. And then you relize that here and there among the mass of those, there is something else and fish are taking those
3. Were fish really rising? When fish are taking nymphs just below the surface it is easy to confuse that with taking of dryflies.

Etc.

hope it wasnt like this last year on the river Cover i know how ya feel

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Flat calm conditions in full light can be very challenging. The fish can be notoriously picky as they have more time to examine the silhouette of the fly, they move across the water in random directions, unlike when there is a breeze where they'll generally track up wind, they are also more aware of any surface disturbance from a cast.

My approach under such circumstances would have been a slow glass with a team of Diawl Bachs or a team of buzzers fished below the surface, a slow glass is preferable as opposed to a sink tip as the whole line is (just) under the surface, lessening the chance of a fish being spooked by surface disturbance. Fish will often be taking below the surface in a flat calm, yet give the impression of surface feeding as they break the surface as they feed just below.

Once a breeze gets up I would have gone straight onto a floater, but in a full light flat calm, with fish moving all over, and no obvious terrestrial or large fly on the water (especially this time of year when it's almost a dead cert they're on buzzers), sub-surface is my first approach.

It's a common occurrence on our water. You've all-on catching in a flat-calm when fish are on tiny buzzers. They can cruise around and "inspect" every offering we throw at them.

Under these conditions I usually catch one or two fish on a small (size 20 or 22) Griffiths Gnat on a 3lb Maxima Ultragreen tippet. Cast out and wait but try and ensure you sink your leader. It's difficult in a flat-calm and you may need to rub it down with Fuller's Earth every cast.

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How poor a thing, sometimes I find,
Will captivate a greedy mind - Isaac Walton.

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Tryu whipping a lure through them, with that many fish rising a lure a few inches down and whizzing passed them, should spark a take

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Intelligence is relative to your environment

I was faced with your situation last week. Usually pretty common early season. I bagged up using scratch's small black an orange buzzers on a floater. Very very slow figure of eight retrieve. The trick here is to to use a high breaking strain of copolymer leader instead of fluro as it sinks too quick. You could even try greasing up the first few feet to keep your buzzers higher up in the water.

Tightlines.

floating line 2 buzzers trapped between 2 boobies throw out and leave static had many fish this way give this a try next time u face those conditions m8

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