The Hatch Code By Andy Kitchener

The Hatch Code by Andy Kitchener is a practical fly-fishing book about reading insect hatches, understanding trout rise forms and choosing the right fly. Across 24 chapters in six parts, it covers rivers, Scottish lochs, reservoirs and stillwaters, with quick-reference field guides and 54 “Angler’s verdict” summaries.

A trout does not read Latin. It reads vulnerability.

When a trout takes a fly from the surface, the book encourages you to consider the insect’s life stage, size and colour before its species. Rather than starting with names and memorising patterns, The Hatch Code helps you read the water in front of you and understand why a particular fly might work.

This is not an entomology textbook with fishing attached. It is a field manual for the angler standing in the river at four o’clock on a difficult afternoon, watching fish rise to something they cannot identify and working through a fly box that suddenly looks like a graveyard of rejected hopes. It teaches you to look at the rise form, light, wind, water temperature and insect life stage, then use those clues to guide your fly selection.

What is inside

Twenty-four chapters across six parts, designed to be read through and returned to on future fishing trips.

• Part One: Reading Before Casting. Practical entomology focused on what changes your fly choice, a five-minute arrival audit and guidance on what different rise forms can tell you.
• Part Two: Time, Weather, Water. Traditional hatch calendars alongside changing hatch timings, plus the effects of barometric pressure, wind, light and water temperature.
• Part Three: The Main Food Groups. Olives, mayfly, sedges, midges and buzzers, beetles, crane flies, stoneflies and signal crayfish. Covers life cycles, timing and vulnerable stages that matter to anglers.
• Part Four: Fishing Different Waters. Chalk streams, Scottish lochs and rivers, reservoirs and stillwaters, with an explanation of how conditions influence your approach.
• Part Five: Pattern Choice and Field Reference. Presentation, matching the hatch and what to do when there is no hatch, followed by quick-reference field guides for use on the bank.
• Part Six: Scientific Identification. Species identification plates built from original photographs, plus a full index.

• Part Seven: Changing Waters

Throughout the book, 54 “Angler’s verdict” summaries give the practical bottom line in a sentence or two, for when you need the answer rather than the full argument.

Who it is for

For the improver who wants to stop guessing, the angler who has read the classics and still wonders why a trout refused, and the experienced fisher noticing changes in familiar hatch timings.

The book assumes you can cast, but does not assume specialist knowledge of insect names. Its emphasis is on understanding what to do on the water, rather than memorising names.

A note on the illustrations

Photographs are credited individually throughout, including work by Cyril Bennett MBE, Don Stazicker and Mark Barrow. Some diagrams and explanatory illustrations were produced digitally, including with AI tools, to explain details that a photograph could not show clearly. This is disclosed in the book’s front matter.

The species identification plates in Chapter 24 are built from real photographs to preserve colour and detail.