The journal · On the water
The Evening Rise, and Why to Arrive Early
The best hour of a summer day is also the easiest to waste. A plan for the last of the light.
Illustrative account The scenes here are composites written to make a point, not a report of a real outing. Editorial note
· 4 minute read · 899 words
Half past eight on a July evening, and the glide below the footbridge looks as it has looked all afternoon: flat, bright and apparently fishless. Swifts are working high over the meadow. Then the sun drops behind the alders, the breeze dies, and somewhere under the far bank a ring opens and spreads. Two minutes later there is another, a yard above it. By nine there are seven fish feeding in forty metres of water that seemed empty at tea time.
In high summer the best fishing of the day is often squeezed into that last hour. The air cools, the water sheds a degree or two, and trout that sulked through the heat move onto the feeding lanes together. It is the most exciting hour in fly fishing and the easiest to waste, usually by arriving as it begins.
Get there before it starts
In mid-July the sun sets a little after nine in the south of England and nearer ten in the north of Scotland, and the rise commonly builds from about an hour before sunset until it is too dark to see. So be at the water ninety minutes before sunset and do nothing useful. Choose one pool or glide rather than planning to cover a mile. Find where you can stand without wading through the lies, where your back cast is clear, and where the fading western sky will be in front of you, so that the fly shows as a dark speck on silver water.
Tie on fresh tippet while the light is good: a leader of 10–12 ft ending in 5X (0.15 mm), or 6X (0.13 mm) if the water is very smooth and the flies are small. Then sit. Fish that have not been disturbed for an hour rise with far more confidence than fish that have watched you thrash about.
What is on the water
On most British rivers the chief insect of summer evenings is the blue-winged olive, Serratella ignita, the only common upwinged fly of its size with three tails. The duns hatch from late afternoon onwards. A day or two later the females return as sherry spinners, flying upstream in swarms a metre or two above the water, each carrying a small green ball of eggs under her tail, and after laying they fall spent with wings flat in the surface. Among them come the sedges, the cinnamon sedge and its relatives, fluttering out from the bankside grass and skating across the top.
Read the rise form
The shape of the rise tells you what is being eaten, and it matters more than the colour of your fly. Watch one fish for a full minute before you choose.
| What you see | What it means | Fly |
|---|---|---|
| A quiet sip, a small ring, perhaps one bubble | Spent spinners or trapped emergers lying flush in the film | Rusty Spinner, size 14–16, flat on the water |
| A bulge or hump with no break in the surface | Nymphs taken just under the top; a dry will be ignored | Unweighted nymph or a shuttlecock emerger, size 16 |
| A steady head-and-tail roll | Duns or larger emergers | Upright-winged Adams, size 14–16 |
| A splashy slash, often near the bank | Sedges skittering | Elk Hair Caddis, size 12–14, with the smallest twitch |
When fish are rising everywhere and refusing everything, the answer is nearly always smaller and lower in the water. Go down two hook sizes and trim the hackle flat underneath so that the body sits in the film and not above it.
One fish at a time
With a dozen fish rising, the temptation is to cast into the middle of them. Pick one, the nearest. Time its rhythm; evening fish often rise at steady intervals, every eight or ten seconds, and hold a very narrow lane, sometimes only a hand’s width. Put the fly half a metre to a metre above it, on its beat, and let it come down without drag. If it is refused twice on good drifts, change the fly rather than repeating the cast. And when you hook it, lead it downstream and away from the others, so the next fish up the line carries on feeding.
Fish that have not been disturbed for an hour rise with far more confidence than fish that have watched you arrive.
The last of the light
- Change flies before you need to. Hold the hook eye up against the sky to thread it. Keep a small red-light torch for knots and point it away from the water.
- Shorten up. As the light goes, fish feed closer and are far less wary. Wade no deeper; cast no further than you can see the fly land.
- Strike by the ring. When the fly disappears from view, lift gently to any rise where you believe it to be.
- Pinch the barb. You will be unhooking fish by feel, in the net, with wet hands.
- Decide in advance when you will stop. Wading out of an unfamiliar river in full dark is the real hazard of the evening rise. Mark your exit point while you can still see it.
Reel in while you can still make out the far bank, and listen to the last fish rise as you walk back across the meadow.