Fishing On The River Eamont, Cumbria

The River Eamont is a major tributary of the Eden. It provides challenging, high quality fishing for brown trout and grayling, as well as being a worthwhile target for salmon fishing as a large portion of the Eden’s salmon run turns up the Eamont.

The Eamont is lake-fed and its source can be considered to be the outflow of Ullswater. However in reality, the Eamont’s waters are gathered from the numerous fell becks and ghylls of the Lake District valleys above Ullswater – Deepdale, Dovedale, Grisedale and such like. The river merges fully-formed form the north end of Ullswater at Pooley Bridge village, even there an interesting trout stream of wide, gravelly shallows punctuated by miniature weir pools. From Ullswater, the Eamont flows in an easterly direction for a dozen or so miles, past the town of Penrith, to join the Eden at Waters Meet on the Edenhall Estate around Langwathby and it is along the lower reaches of the river where the Yorkshire Fly Fishers Club controls the fishing rights, on the left bank from Brougham down to Udford.

The Eamont is a fascinating river to fish. Being lake-fed, it responds differently to rainfall than the parent river. Ullswater can act as a buffer at times, meaning that even when the Eden is in full spate, the Eamont may still be fishable, perhaps rising slowly as the level of the lake slowly responds to fresh water streaming off the fellsides above. For similar reasons the Eamont tends to fall away more slowly than many spate streams and can remain lively of flow through several weeks of dry weather when neighbouring rivers have dropped dead low.

The river is generally quite fast-flowing and has a substrate of gravels and cobbly stones, with beds of ranunculus evident in many places. Invertebrate populations are healthy, caddis species faring particularly well, but with all the usual upwing species present - including resurgent March browns – and good numbers of the increasingly scarce large Perlodes stonefly species. A strong population of often large wild brown trout is present, with a few grayling in the slower pools. The trout fishing can be challenging, but catch it right and dry fly sport with fish in the 3lb – or even 4lb and beyond – size class is very much on the cards.

Salmon fishing on the Eamont can be tremendous. The river is not particularly large and the water can be easily covered, even with a single hander in most cases. It is said that the majority of the Eden system salmon turn up the Eamont and so the opportunity exists on our beats to intercept a large number of running fish when conditions are right. It is a great feeling to be able to cover every inch of a pool through which one is confident fish are moving and although the river very much plays second fiddle to the Eden in the reputation stakes, there is huge potential here for the salmon angler of pioneering spirit.

YFFC Image Gallery - Fishing On The River Eamont

 

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