Category — Fishing trips

Time on the river has been extremely limited this season. I’m currently going through the process of writing up a big project for my job (ok, it’s a thesis..) which appears to be more and more like torture every day. The few times I have been out seem to have taken on a new significance, like rare glimpses of sunlight at the end of a big dark cave.

Last weekend I headed over to a favourite river for some serious lone time. Lone time, with added trout. As part of my ongoing musings into the optimum rod to use on rivers, I strung up the shotgun for a bit of a fling. Old stiffy, as she is now also know, turned out to be a whole lot better than I imagined. (For new readers, Old stiffy is a Sage XP, 9′, 5 weight.)

Streamers and dries lie at the opposite ends of the fly fishing spectrum. I already love dries, and fish them wherever possible. But I’ve recently felt an unnerving attraction towards streamers, with their unashamed brashness and ‘use me or screw me’ attitude. This may or may not have something to do with the incredible number of large trout that a certain fishing acquaintance of mine has caught whilst using them over the past couple of seasons. The problem, or perhaps `challenge’ is a better word, lies in combining the two approaches in an outfit that allows both vices to be enjoyed equally.

For the first couple of hours I used an intermediate line with a fast sinking polyleader looped onto the end. Together with a weighted streamer this combination can get reasonably deep quite quickly, so is perfect for searching out deeper runs and seams. This last sentence is yet another wonderful example of the bullshit I spout on occasion (`only on occasion‘ the audience screams!), for I am a total newbie to streamer fishing, and have only ever caught a handful of fish like this. What I should have said was that it feels like a perfect setup for searching out the blah blah blah..

Well I searched and I searched for quite a few hours, and didn’t see, hear, feel or smell any trout. Disgruntled that all my good feelings about streamer fishing weren’t producing, I sat down and mused. There was plenty of evidence of the recent floods our rivers have experienced. The high water line looked like a frightening prospect in comparison to the clear water flowing past my feet. It was funny to see the silt deposited on leaves that normally only shower in the rain. The clear water drew my attention again, and I longed for dry fly simplicity.

Off with the intermediate-sink-tip-polyleader-good-feeling nonsense, and on with a floating fiver. This one hadn’t been used in more than a season, and still had the glued-in leader butt I once eulogised over to anyone who would listen. It really is a nice setup, so smooth and with excellent turnover. As usual I overestimated the required leader length, ending up with something that could be used to measure swimming pools. Something like 20′, which is really a little obscene.

With my lewd leader I thus marched off up to the next run. During the lengthy process of switching over my setup I had noticed a single, solitary rise in a small bit of creased water where a tiny burn flowed into the main river. With no more sign of life forthcoming I began short casts from the back of the run, slowly working up towards the burn. Third or fourth cast in and there was a wonderful, savage take to my fly. It was the kind of take that reminded me of the cutthroat trout in the west of Canada a few seasons back. Eager and willing. The fish now connected to Old stiffy quickly demonstrated that stiffness is a relative term, which is both reassuring and disturbing at the same time. It was the first fish I’ve hooked on the rod that actually made me feel like there was going to be a fight involved. There was.

The trout jumped out the water maniacally, showing the same eagerness to reach for the sky as she’d shown for my floating fly. I had that glorious, stomach churning feeling as I realised that this was probably my fish of the season, and I’d better not cock up. She quickly decided that the fast riffley run downstream looked like a good spot for a picnic, and bolted off. I had foolishly thought that a bit of sneakiness with side pressure and a ready net might forego any complications, and was left with one hand on the rod, one clutching my net and the other… flailing for the fly line. That’s three hands, which is what it felt like.

I performed that kind of half-shuffle, half-long jump motion required to pursue a fish downstream through thigh-high water, whilst waving my rod about quite a lot and repeatedly muttering “don’t come off, please don’t come off…”. In the quieter water beyond the riffle I started to apply some strong pressure, which caused the fish to jump again. There seems to be no better time for a fish to throw a hook than during a jump, so I eased off a little. By now I’d seen the trout quite clearly through the water (did I mention it was clear?) and she was a beauty. A more controlled application of side pressure brought her to the surface, and with a couple of desperate reaches with the net she was in.

As it happened I had chosen this day to take along my new net, one of those nice Maclean weigh-nets from New Zealand. The idea of a weigh-net is actually quite funny for most of the fishing I do, what with micro-parr and the odd half-pounder signifying a good day at the moment. But I had got a good deal on it, so plumped up the cash in an act not far from self-mockery. The beauty with a weigh net, over the more conventional Salter scales that you manually hook onto the net at the opportune moment, is that the reading you get doesn’t have to be adjusted for the weight of the net. It’s already calibrated. So what you see, for one God-foresaken time, is what you get. In this case that was exactly 2.5lb of golden, gorgeous trout.

A few moments for a photo session and I eased her (I’m pretty sure it was a female; she was certainly very pretty and slightly feminine in a Lara Croft kind of way) into the flow. A couple of moments and she pushed forward and quickly disappeared into the background of the rocky riverbed. Unquestionably my fish of the season, and unquestionably the nicest feeling I can remember for quite a long time.

After all that I had to phone someone, so it was my dad and brother who got the first telling. They were sitting down to a lovely curry at the time, which eased the reception of the fact that I was having amazing fishing and they weren’t. There’s an amazing rush of excitement after a trout like that which is hard to explain to folks who don’t fish. It’s a kind of head spinning rush of joy which seems to far outweigh the material fact of the capture. Even if the trout was quite big, even if it was beautiful, why does it feel so incredibly, soul-burstingly satisfying?

I fished on up the run with nothing to show for it. Nothing except for the whopping great grin on my face from that trout, of course. I slowly started to sink back into something like a regular fishing mode, and began to appreciate the reason that Old stiffy is so highly regarded in the trout world. She really does turn over leaders like the All Blacks against England. Loops unroll quickly, smoothly and with pin-prick accuracy. Even a fairly moderate breeze doesn’t seem to be a great problem. There’s still no question that when fishing dries I feel more at home with my slightly noodly 3 weight, but in all honesty it wasn’t too bad. And it certainly makes fishing the streamers a little less comical. Perhaps I just need to accept that fishing dries and streamers requires quite a lot of compromise on both parts. I think that a stiffish 5 weight like this is probably as close to the useful middle ground as can be had.

After an hour or so of fishless fishing, I crawled out the river and walked up past some moderately interested cows to a long flat. There were fewer trees, but oddly enough a couple of fish rose almost immediately. There had been no sign of any hatch all day, so I wasn’t sure what had brought them up. The rises were gentle though, so I put up a little CDC thing. Eventually I got a solid take, which turned out to be a very feisty grayling (are grayling ever not feisty?). A clean 1lb and a quarter, according to my what-you-see-is-what-you-get-net. He (I think it was a he, the dorsal was pretty long and he looked pissed off) was slipped back with a bit of a splash on my camera, and I decided it was time to trundle back to the car. I don’t know how many more days I’m doing to get on the river this season, but I hope this one will give me a little smile when the going is rough. It will certainly be a long time before I forget the enthusiasm of that take from the beautiful brownie; a bit of cutthroat hope in a big dark cave.

It’s always nice to go fishing with a couple of pals. It’s even nicer if you’re having a mini-reunion on a favourite stretch of river with a wee band of lads who haven’t fished together for more than a year.

A week or two ago Emanuelle, the Italian DFM (Dry Fly Master), made the trip up to bonny Scotland from jolly Engerland to fish with Alistair and I on a glorious highland river. They made a weekend of it (apparently without anything large and dark in colour) but I could only join them for a day, so bolted up the road one morning, arriving at the permit shop around half nine and just in time for the the olives.

I love the feeling of excitement when you speak to a fishing pal on the phone who’s already on the river. They describe the current conditions, giving a tantalising glimpse of what’s happening, and so setting off an incredible burst of eagerness to finish buying lunch and the day ticket and to get on down to the water. Speed restrictions and road works, especially following such a conversation, never feel as frustrating as when they impede travel to the side of a river…

I pulled my car up as the DFM was stringing up some dodgy Sage belonging to Alistair. Our attention was immediately drawn to the river and the regular rising of several trout. The sky was piercing blue in the morning light. Dropping my gaze down to the mountain fringed horizon and on to the glistening river surface, the view was spectacular. The greedy slurp of a trout in a crinkly little creese just upstream rounded off one of the most soul warming scenes an angler in Scotland could hope to see.

The Italian Sage Swinger was first in the water, and quickly caught a couple of nice brownies on the dry. It must be said at this point that the smile on his face was truly something to behold. I just about caught sight of the end of it as it disappeared over the hill, presumably towards Rome or Milan. Fishing with pals sometimes gives you a chance to share in someone else’s unbridled joy. It sometime gives you the chance to feel the disturbing murmuring of murderous jealousy and rage as well, but on this occasion it was the certainly former.

I got up to the crease and started chucking out the usual fluff. Three nice trout obliged my offer in quick succession, and I began to feel that little surge of self-confidence that comes right before a fall. The fall was twofold: I slightly overbalanced from the ledge I was perched on and almost fell in, and then the next trout didn’t like my flies. I switched to a smaller fly, something with CDC in it (go smaller, smaller…!) and a few casts later it was sucked under and the best trout of the lot came to the net. Still nothing enormous, but the steady action was exactly what was needed after a fairly itty-bitty start to the season.

Around half eleven the hatch trickled off and the trout mooched on down to the pub on the bottom of the river. The stiffening easterly didn’t help matter either, and we began to contemplate a shift of location. This idea was soon firmed up as the (apparently lucid) gentleman salmon angler who had been watching us cast to rising fish decided to switch to his trout rod and wade in to the river about 15 meters above our Italian dry fly hero. We exchanged confused glances that quickly morphed into steely glares as the gentleman requested that we make up his sandwiches and rub sun tan lotion into his neck. (The last sentence may be a slight fudging of reality, but by this time it seemed the laws of normal reality and interpersonal cordiality had long broken down so don’t blame me.)

We bolted off up river to a promising run, but the still-stiffening east hoolie gave us second thoughts as the river was quite exposed. It our collective confusion Alistair and I turned to the Master for ideas, and he suggested a little spot he knew. We arrived at the spot twenty minutes later and bushwacked our way through wild vegetation to reach a point of the river a few hundred yards downstream of where we started.. Of course we bowed to the Master, who certainly knows this river better than I, and we started fishing.

Nothing moved at all, except for the micro-parr that seemed to be suicidally throwing themselves between the rocks at the edge of the water. Even the dark horse streamers didn’t produce anything, so eventually I resorted to a favourite searching pattern and started some casting practice. By some incredible twist of luck I managed to put my fly over a grayling without spooking him, and he enthusiastically grabbed the fly. It’s not really a good time of year to catch grayling, so I got him back as quickly as possible. Interestingly enough he did put up a serious scrap though, despite the obvious sexiness on his mind.

I ended up having a pretty successful day, in conditions that were excellent to start with but which quickly tailed off. Even in May, it seems, the hatches are already concentrating into short spells in the morning. It really payed to be on the river early enough to see flies moving, which is something I must remember for next year.

Enamuelle did pretty well too, despite disgracefully abandoning his dry fly ethics at one stage and opting for the some nymphy abominations. He even caught a fish, and to be honest I can hardly begrudge the man, for it was a great day spent in good company and spirit, with the old Northern master returning to catch again.

Last week I really got into a fishing groove for the first time this season. A full day down at one of my usual spots proved to be very difficult, as did the next at another big-fish river. The bright sun and suddenly scorching weather seems to have left the fish thinking they’re all in Barbados, and don’t need to worry about olives and my flies any more.

On Thursday I managed to sneak a few hours at one of my oldest haunts, a place where one glorious May afternoon saw the capture of my largest brownie. It’s also a place not far from where the Spring Submariner lived last year, and my thoughts were of running into one of his relatives. I parked the car and walked close to the pool, stringing up the slightly stiffer 4 weight rod in place of my usual 3 weight matchstick.

Upon arriving, however, I experienced one of those strange, uncontrollable magnetic attractions to walk, walk.. I walked past some really nice water, all the while thinking “that looks nice, I’ll just get in down at the next pool..”. But I kept walking and musing and ho-huming in the bright 11am sunshine. No fish seemed to be showing, and something about the next run drew my attention.

I finally arrived at the run, glorious and full of small seams, rolling boulder-rounded water and a final silky flat. Straight away there was a rise in a seam near the head of the pool. I waited for several minutes, creeping up to the bank edge on hands and knees and peering in to the lightly Jura-stained water. Another fish rose in another seam. Hairs stood up on my neck for the first time this season: finally some trout at the surface, feeding and making me smile. I wondered why the fish in this pool were back from Barbados. Looking around it became pretty obvious, as the sun flitted down from behind a huge wall of trees: shade! The whole pool was bathed in shadow, creating that wonderful kind of crisp spring light that tells of warmer days to come, but reminds you of the cooler days not long past. Perhaps it was just the sheer intensity of the May sun that had caused all the problems on the other rivers, and the real secret was to hunt shade first, and then trout.

A few olives and the odd brook dun were coming off, though I felt that I was actually at the tail end of the morning rise. I should have spent less time in the village shop getting my ham salad baguette made up and more time making like my father’s wind and down to the river. As I glanced downstream I spotted another couple of rises in the rolling water of the mid-run. They looked like better fish, but I opted to try for the wee rise in the head of the run and purposefully tied on a deer hair emerger in a scruffy size 14. After a bit of wonky casting in the stiffening south-easterly he rose nicely to my fly, and a quick tussle later he was in the net and sparkling in that shadow-light.

I waded back to the near bank and started to skulk very slowly down the edge of the river. I felt a little naughty as this kind of wading seems to be universally heralded as the ultimate in fish-spooking, but again that magnetic draw made it hard to concentrate on anything other than the twinkling river surface. Then there was one of those rises that really makes the hair on the back of your neck wake up. Fins and tails wafted in the surface as the fish sipped emegers. In my experience only the better fish ever rise like this, so I immediately got out of the river and took a huge detour downstream by a potato field and slipped in at the head of the next pool.

Wading slowly across to be well under the shade of the trees I saw another couple of rises, which suggested at least three good fish in the run. It was one of those slightly confusing situations where you aren’t sure if there’s one fish or ten, and you’re afraid to wade any further in case you spook any of them. It’s also difficult to judge where to cast, so in the end I spent a long time waiting up to my waist in the water until something rose just a couple of rod lengths away. I speedily covered the rise (DHE no. 14 again..) and had an instant, swirling take. I struck and he bolted off across the river, jumping clear of the water and twisting between rocks. At first I thought he was foul-hooked as he really made a meal of things, jigging around and dancing merrily. He eventually slid over my net and looked truly fantastic in the last moments of the morning. He wasn’t a real leviathan at 16″, but after a long winter without any grayling or trout, El Beautio was like a shark and really made my day.

I quickly phoned my dad to break the news. He was fishing for carp, bream and roach down in Cambridgeshire with my uncle, and it turned out he’d had a great morning too. Nine fish including a nice bream against my uncle’s blank. Bizarre really, as my uncle is a fine fisherman and often helps my dad get set up at the start of a day. I munched away on my (rather superb) baguette, followed by a delicious slice of tiffin, and eyed the pool for further action.

Nothing much seemed to be happening. Perhaps the capture of El Beautio had spooked the pool, but I actually think I was lucky to catch the tail end of the hatch and rise. After half an hour of pondering, a couple of splashy rises suggested things might be happening again. I crept back into the river from under the trees and assumed position in the lee of a particularly large branch.

A fish rose in the water ahead of me, right in the middle of the river. After neither my DHE nor DHS turned up any interest, I started to get confused. I tried a small dirty duster but that didn’t work either. When my usual absolute-winner-super-duper-never-fail CDC dry didn’t produce I got desperate. The fish kept rising occasionally, but my staple dries seemed to be useless. I dug around in my box of lesser-used flies and my gaze was quickly attracted by an old badger-hackled red tag. As I moistened the knot I became oddly confident that the fish was actually munching terrestrial bugs, and so the old fly might in fact be a perfect choice. Second cast down and the fish aggressively took the fly. Despite his slightly disappointing size, it was a pretty satisfying conclusion to the days events and I headed off back upstream and towards home.

In other news, I found out during proceedings that it is in fact possible to cast a size 6 long shank woolly bugger on a stiffish 4 weight rod, even if you look like an Olympic javelin thrower doing it. Watch this space..

It was tough going today. This year it seems winter has frog-leaped spring right into summer. It was well into the 20s by early afternoon, with a few frothy clouds and almost unbroken sunshine. It was only a few weeks ago that I was up Stob Ghabhar with ice axe and crampons. Crazy stuff.

The day was spent on my favourite bit of water. On Tuesday I had nicked down to check it out, more a gentle ‘hello again’ than anything, and it was very quiet. Today it was also quiet. A couple of olive uprights flitted around (ok, medium olives…), both newly hatched and spinners, but the trout were very reluctant to go anywhere near the surface. The few I did tempt were all dropped off (bar one) which added to a frustrating day. My pal Alistair witnessed first hand two of my failures, which was obviously damaging to my already-shrunken ego.

It really was a bit strange today. Plenty of trees still in their spindly winter state, but baking sunshine at the same time along with a river that looked six months early in flow and weed growth. As Alistair asked on more than one occasion: where is spring?

Even Alex didn’t do very well. This means only the one two-pounder and a smattering of smaller stuff. Holy shit does that man fish hard… which brings me onto the main purpose of this blether: the dry-dropper method.

Last season I (somewhat begrudgingly) had a proper go at fishing a nymph suspended from the hook bend of a bushy dry fly. It turned out to be a great success, and I caught loads of grayling and quite a few nice trout. I certainly caught fish in situations I would never have caught them before with my preferred single dry fly. Examples include blind fishing through riffles with little obvious surface activity, and blind fishing through deep, fast runs.

Alistair “sell-out” Stewie tries to flog some dodgy tippet material

Neither Alistair nor myself like this method of fishing very much. Casting is at best ungamely (particularly with bead heads), and within a short while I find myself yearning for the simple control of a single dry. It’s a method which isn’t really nymphing, and isn’t really dry fly fishing, and many would argue that this is precisely why it is so good. Who am I to disagree? I might have tried once, before that is, I spent any length of time fishing with Alex. He fishes this method, as far as I can tell, almost exclusively and catches astoundingly well. He is a genuine fish machine.

This evening I got to thinking about the method, and some of the other methods for nymph fishing, and came to the horrible conclusion that for sub-surface fly fishing there really isn’t a more effective way to fish. In certain situations, like a heavy hatch or in the middle of winter, there might be other more suitable techniques. But I really struggled to avoid the thought that for the absolute best bang-for-your-buck there isn’t anything to touch the dry-dropper style.

Alistair carefully stalks blue sky

I mean this as a general statement that covers a sort of ‘average’ of all fishing situations. Approach any river at a random time and this technique just seems to have the perfect combination of user-friendliness and reliability.

Earlier this week I got round to having a go at true upstream wet fly fishing with a couple of simple spiders. This style really appeals to me, but it certainly isn’t easy. I fished quite hard and didn’t touch anything but weed. At the end of the day I tried a dry-dropper setup and immediately caught a fish. The dry just bobbed slightly and I was in. What more can an angler ask for in a method? I still think there is mileage in getting good with the upstream wets, but at times it’s difficult to stop myself from the thought that I may as well stick a dry-dropper on and have done with it.

In this photo my good pal has managed to lift up a large chunk of metal and carefully place it on top of my leader, paralysing my ability to catch fish

Again today I spent a good hour watching the water for rises, with nothing showing at all. I then tackled up a little tungsten-headed hare’s ear under a deer hair sedge and on the third cast hooked a trout on the nymph. The take was easy to spot: the dry dived under the water, I struck and he was on. Certainly a hell of a lot easier than the kind of dumbfounded confusion I feel when fishing upstream wets.

One of my fishing pals is a superb upstream nymph fisherman. I remember fishing hard through a nice grayling pool one winter day without a single fish. He came in after both my brother and I had tried the pool twice each, and immediately caught a lovely fish. We were all fishing heavy nymphs, but he was a long way ahead of us in terms of really fishing the water.

Perhaps I just need to force myself to fish upstream wets and nymphs whenever I would otherwise fish a dry-dropper. The aforementioned pal said it was only a matter of practice to get good at spotting takes, so perhaps the whole escapade just requires a bit of patience. As with so many things in fishing it’s just a matter of taste. At the moment I think I’m rejecting the dry-dropper thing out of mild arrogance as well as the aesthetic issues. But in the end it will be interesting to see if I can persevere, or if the lure of actually catching fish proves too much.

Well it’s been a while coming but I got out onto a favourite urban river three times last week. The first two trips were spectacular failures without even a hint of a fish in the whole river. For the third trip a couple of lucky pals showed me the way to one or two hot spots..

“Hmm… no fish.”

Like a lot of places this season (so it seems) there were a few olives around but the fish were a pretty big no-show on the surface. Through extreme good fortune I spotted a single rise in a wee run close to where my pals were standing and skulked off downstream. I now confess to my sin of fishing the duo successfully and catching him from the eye of the pool on a nymph.

I had one more from a similar run a little further downstream, but all-in-all it was a very difficult day. The Lucky Ones headed off to a wee burn later in the day, but I had an inkling to stay put and spent the next two hours watching brown water slide by, unimpeded by rising trout (ok there was a single rise which I proceeded to target, hook the fish and promptly loose him).

Things can only get better.

Nine days of fishing. For anyone less than a guide or a professional trout bum, it’s a good stretch. For the first few days it’s a novelty, then it begins to feel strangely normal. Casting becomes more natural, presentation more consistent, fly choice oddly instinctive. It’s almost like finding an activity that draws on all one’s spirit, slowly moulding everything together to fit some kind of focussed purpose. When a ‘normal’ day involves nine hours at a desk, it’s a deeply satisfying purpose to feel, even if it lasts just a few days.

The North is really about the lochs. There are thousands of them, scattered all across the land and each one with a particular character. It’s probably a good analogy to imagine the landscape as a giant bowl of curry. There are endless chunks of onion (the ‘typical’ lochs), punctuated by the occasional tomato (the ‘better’ lochs), and the odd rare and prized piece of tender lamb (the ’special’ lochs). As with curry, it’s no use having just one ingredient: variety is truly the spice of life and the huge variety of Scottish lochs provides hope for a lifetime of interesting fishing. Lochs brim-full with pretty wee brownies desperate to eat a fly are sometimes exactly what is called for after a day fruitlessly chasing after the tenderest lamb. But on the days when the butcher is kind, a lifelong memory can be found in the glistening bronze flank of a 2lb belter. It’s all in the mix.
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Fishing is a great way to see biology in action. Over on my regular beats the average trout probably pushes 8 or 9oz, with a good number of fish towards a pound and even the odd monster. Last week I nipped out of town one evening with the intention of hitting one of those regular spots. I’d left things rather late, however, so I decided to stop by one of the tiny wee burns I always skip past on my usual travels. A quick saunter down behind some bushes revealed a pretty little ribbon of brackish looking water cutting its way through the commercial forestry. Within two minutes a couple of rings emerged on the surface, and I bolted up to the car for the gear.

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Tonight I was in the unusual situation of having fished my favourite river for the previous two evenings (those reports are on the way…) The fishing had gotten noticeably better between the first and second sessions, and my hopes began to dance ever more enthusiastically as I arrived to find BWO’s and sedges cavorting over the water.

I rigged up a new fly, the CDC loopwing emerger. I tie this fly on a curved hook (Kamasan B100) and reckon it looks about as good as any emerger I’ve come across. It’s sits kind of like a DHE, but with better consistency. It also has a really nice, messy thorax which seems to suggest drowned wings and such mischief. After this evening’s festivities it will find a permanent place in a corner of my fly box. Up to the first pool, and after 10 minutes of watching a nice fish showed in a swirling run near the pool’s neck. Ten or fifteen fruitless casts followed before a final ‘chuck and chance’ presentation brought a lovely boil of a rise and one of the best trout I’ve had this season. Fighting fit and with the suggestion of a kype, he was a cracking way to start things off.

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A summer’s evening, under the trees. The flow flows by and carries the light. It carries an angler’s hope as well, little olives and dancing sedges.

It’s July. It’s one of the best times of the year. You can fish the rivers until the soft red sky turns midnight blue. The trout rise slowly at 7 and build to a gloopy frenzy by 9 or 10. The big hope is a BWO spinner fall followed by the grand summer sedges.

The evening starts with a prospective F-fly, perhaps a size 16. It’s got a little dusting of hare’s mask over a red thread body. Carefully flicking the 3 weight, all the good foam lines are covered. The sporadic rises of early evening slowly give way to the steady sipping of trout quietly feasting on spinners trapped in the surface. Time for the polypropylene sherry spinner, tied on a size 16 or 18 hook. It’s amazing how close the trout will let an angler wade: they only ask for quiet steps and gentle butterfly casts.

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