Fly Fishing in Yorkshire

Fly fishing in Yorkshire on FishingBeats, at least on what's currently bookable, comes down to one river and one beat: Driffield Beck, over in the East Riding, about as far from the Dales as you can get and still call yourself Yorkshire water. The county's reputation is built on rain-fed freestone rivers, the Wharfe, Ure, Swale and Nidd chief among them, and on the soft-hackled wet flies of the North Country spider tradition set down in T E Pritt's Yorkshire Trout Flies back in 1885. Driffield Beck has nothing to do with any of that. It's a chalk stream, and a genuine one, rising off the Wolds chalk at the eastern edge of a county otherwise known for entirely different water.

It rises as a spring at Elmswell, in the foothills of the Yorkshire Wolds, and runs a shade over ten miles before it's done, changing its name as it goes: Elmswell Beck first, then Driffield Beck through the town itself, then West Beck below Driffield, before it joins the Driffield Navigation at Emmotland and becomes the River Hull. Natural England's citation for the River Hull Headwaters SSSI calls it the most northerly chalk stream system in Britain, and it has the pedigree to match the description: The Field was praising it as far back as 1870, and J W Hills, who wrote A Summer on the Test, thought the Beck very like the Itchen. It even has its own fly, the Driffield Dun, which looks not unlike a Greenwell's Glory.

One thing worth packing around: there's no mayfly hatch here, whatever your instincts say about chalk streams in early summer. What these becks are known for instead is the hawthorn, which comes off in late April and into May, and the local answer through the rest of the season is small flies, fished delicately, sometimes down to a size 26. Trout run April to September, with grayling picking up through the winter.

The one beat currently listed is Mulberry Whin, at Skerne, let by Fishing Breaks since 2012 on water that's been farmed by the same family since 1940 and is now into its fourth generation. It's over a mile of double bank split into five beats, and you choose which to fish on arrival; wading is an option on Beats 4 and 5 only. Fishing is for wild brown trout and grayling, topped up with Yorkshire-reared browns over 3lb, on a ticket that runs one to five rods, no dogs, with a take-home limit of two fish rather than catch-and-release. Day rods are £95 in April, £145 from May to the end of June, and £100 from July to the end of September.