Ritz opens A Fly Fisher's Life on the Andelle: it is the river on which he first tried to take a fish with an artificial fly. It has kept its reputation since, and deserves it — chalk-fed, clear, stable in temperature, and rich enough in fly life to hold wild brown trout and grayling that have no reason to be careless. The water runs over gravel through heavy ranunculus, and the weed channels the current into lanes barely a rod's width across. Fish a long, fine bas de ligne and put the fly upstream of the lie rather than over it; a drag you cannot see is still a drag the trout can. The mayfly is what the river is known for — Ephemera danica through the back end of May and into June, when the most careful fish briefly stop being careful — with olives either side of it and sedge into the evening. The most disciplined water is the fly reach at Radepont: six kilometres held by La Mouche Charlevalaise, fly only, no kill, and never more than six rods on it in a day, booked in advance. Other beats are private or estate water. Establish access before travelling.
In chalk-spring and karst trout systems, generally stable temperatures broaden olive and other mayfly activity from early spring into autumn, with strong evening caddis, steady subsurface scuds and buzzers where clear groundwater and weedbeds develop, and terrestrials from meadow and woodland banks rounding out the food calendar, depending on how fast each river drops and clears after rain.
- Chalk
