After an outing to the Ure, near Bainbridge, North Yorkshire on Saturday I enjoyed a day of varying behaviour in fish species.

Let me set the context. The conditions that day were a downstream wind, although not strong or cold it made the day seem somewhat cooler than of late after all this hot weather. The river was not too low, perhaps a foot down on normal levels. Tempreture, still warm, but not too hot and overcast for most of the day with the odd ray of sunshine, beaming out of a window in the white cloud. I approached the river and it was quite. Fish rising in the odd favoured lie and only a sporadic trickle of fly coming off the water. These appeared in the main to be Willow fly and some smaller olives.

I elected to fish a team of 2 spiders through the faster, streamy runs, switching over to a small BWO dry in the calmer stretches between runs. The spider fishing was giving me a few taps and the dry fly nothing, just ignored by any rising fish. I put a beaded PT nymph on the point of my spider set up, to fish a bit deeper and hooked in to a good fish (brown trout)which subsequently came off. It took the partridge and orange on the middle dropper, I knew this because the thread body had been broken after the take (I only tie a thin body, once up and down with the the thread). I added a further spider to fish a partridge and yellow on the top dropper, still nothing happening. Realising the type of fly on the water I changed again to 2 spiders dark snipe and purple, representing the Willow fly on the top dropper, quite near to the fly line itself and partridge and orange, representing an olive nymph, on the point along way below at 2 metres away, I had removed the weighted/ beaded PT nymph . Both flys were tied on the same type of hook, size 14 partidge wet. I started to fish harder, predominently across and down. Here's what I noticed.

All five brown trout I caught were on the partidge and orange and I had two grayling all to the dark snipe and purple. To me these fish definately had a preference. The flys were fishing at a similar height, as they had little time to sink in the flow. I can only think that brown trout enjoy an olive more than a Willow fly and grayling are the opposite. I did fish a dry BWO that was nudged and pushed about on the surface but they weren't really interested. Anyone else out there find fish behaviour unusual at times?

is that a trick question

trout are unpredictable at the best of times. for example, once i was fishing the nidelva in norway, a trout came and started swimming round my legs as i was casting, the fish i was casting a perfectly presented size 16 midge at bolted at the sign of the slight surface disturbance. the fish by my feet only got spooked when i started to move along the river.