News

All in a Day’s Work! Getting ready for the new season in 2020!

The Red Tag fly, designed by the founder of TAC, Maximillian Walbran, was mentioned in the 2016 Autumn edition of Flydresser (page 29). Apparently he had been recommended to try the fly ‘Worcester Gem’ on his Yorkshire rivers. He consequently then changed the name of the ‘Worcester Gem’ to ‘the Red Tag’ and first mentioned it in a chapter on grayling flies in his book British Angling Flies (second edition).

The Red Tag – Walbran’s version

Body: bright green peacock’s harl over which winds a red cock’s hackle, and a scrap of crimson floss silk at the tail.

However FM Halford had described it, some three years before, in Floating Flies & How to Dress Them. Here he said the Hackle was Blood red game cock; the Body was copper-coloured peacock herl with 2 or 3 stands twisted together. The tag was Ibis or scarlet wool.

We continue to research the addition of diploid trout to the river and thankfully the first three years of our Investigation has been very successful. The Environment Agency are happy with the data that we are providing and are supportive of our continuing work on this subject.

Yet another day of hard work. Volunteers, ably lead by Bobby, the River Keeper and Stewart, the club Secretary, felled trees and cleared the river bank ‘at the top end’. Two weirs were built into the hatchery water supply to help prevent solids from entering the ponds and all were sustained by pork pies and jaffa cakes. The next working party will be on 22nd June 2019.

We had a fantastic Working Party day in June and have dramatically improved access to several hundred metres of fishing above the Lodge to the extent that we are looking at a series of further steps down the bank. We also increased pork pie and Jaffa Cake consumption substantially! We finished at 16.00 (all completely knackered!) so we’d like to finish off a section on the 23rd June, 0900 at the Hatchery.
We’d also like to organise a further day on the 15th September (same deal on pie and Jaffa Cake bribery).

Volunteers got into action to do some work at the Hatchery. They tidied up the ground works after sorting out pipes. It is planned to turf this area and has already been dubbed ‘Stewart’s Lawn’! Hopefully this will be resplendent for the planned Hog Roast in the summer. However on this occasion the 9 volunteers were suitably  nourished with Pork pies and jaffa cakes!

Members joined together at the hatchery for a wonderful hog roast in July.  We were able to see all the improvements that the working party had achieved along with meeting Bobby, the river keeper and his girlfriend. Fortunately the weather was kind, the rain keeping off until later.