Fishing trips

A month since words appeared here. The unholy unification of work, travel and lack of fishing have conspired against fun times and leaping trout. The usual glut of June evenings hunting down BWO supping trout have not transpired at all, replaced by hours spent indoors watching impressive thunderstorms and finding new ways to put off doing useful work.

There have been precisely two trips since the end of June. One was a miserable, rainy blank, about as far from certain other people’s hero-shot glory as is possible… The other was a 2 hour targeted strike last week, at dusk, down a local river. Whereas I usually arrive early on such evenings, this time it was well past 9pm before the leader touched the first riffle.

Moving up through the run it was an odd feeling to use the 3 weight for only the second or third time this year. Spaghetti came to mind at first, but it became natural quickly enough. A bit more colour to the water than usual (and it’s usually a bit coloured), and a distinct smell of mankind-derived-fumes (MDF) mixed in with wildflowers and damp grass.

Up at the big quiet pool there were trout rising as usual. Spinners buzzed around and showed on the water, but the splashy rises inspired the choice of a foam beetle. This didn’t work at all. Many refusals later and on with the quintessential summer evening fly, the size 16 sherry spinner. An immediate response, and there followed an hour or so of lovely quiet fishing to free rising little trout. The largest was still south of 1/2lb, but gave a great tussle on the light gear.

The highlight came from a nice trout that was rising right under branches, and protected on the far side by a protruding log. A couple of branches caught, followed by mild oaths, then a good cast and a calm take and the line was running around in circles, matching my own heightened mood of optimism.

Short evening sessions break up the worky drag of a week quite beautifully. Quick enough to fit in, even after some dinner, but memorable enough to wonder about the next day whilst sipping tea and thinking of the 173rd novel procrastinatory solution to life’s problems.

I trudged up the hill to the car, waiting in hot anticipation for that blasted dog to howl at me again. Instead I was serenaded by swooping bats, not that I could hear them of course. Across the valley a full moon rose and everything shimmered in pale blue. That sense of slight coolness on the face at this late hour, balanced by the warmth of the wader-clad walk. It felt like summer.

The spring public holidays are greeted by fly anglers with particular enthusiasm. Time off from work right in the middle of the early spring hatches, a chance to escape down to some flowing water. I planned my own debacle last night. Leaking waders were further patched with aquasure, flies properly arranged in their boxes and old rotting bananas removed from the depths of the fishing box. There’s a special satisfaction in having plans laid and all equipment prepared the night before. Time enough for a wee dram and for the flow of memories past and perhaps to come.

I arrived at the waterside this morning in good time, despite the longer nature of this foray. The fishing is really all about catching the spring hatches at this time of the season. Arriving by 10.30am I reckoned I would have a good chance to watch an olive hatch start, build up and fade away. The searing warm temperatures made me a little uneasy, however. Well over 20C in April is a bit odd, and I wasn’t sure if this, perhaps coupled with the very low water conditions, might affect the aquatic insect activity. It did.

I ambitiously opted for the slightly shorter, and increasingly floppy 4 weight rod. There was barely a wheeze of air at the car, and I knew the river level was already at summer low. I convinced myself that in order to optimally stalk and cast to the legions of spooky rising trout that would surely be found, a light-line approach was most suitable. This was a cock up.

As I crept up to the riffle it was instantly obvious that things were going to be tricky. The river was about as low as I’ve seen it, and out in the open the bare wheezing of air experienced at the car was more of a prolonged sneeze. Undeterred I strung up a long leader and headed below the riffle to a lovely pool with a long, flat tail out. Here the bright sun revealed every stone on the riverbed. Twenty minutes of observation revealed nothing at all except for the odd hawthorn fly being blow downstream.

I opted to fish a small blackish nymph. A bit of sheep’s wool served as an indicator placed a meter above. The tiniest shot I carried went on 8 inches above the nymph to get it down into the depths of the seam ahead. It turns out that this setup, with a 15 foot leader, a 4 weight floppy rod and a pleasant downstream breeze allowed me to consistently place the fly line tip and the entire cast within 5 inches of each other with a 90% success rate. The other option, namely that of actually landing the cast extended, was achieved with a success rate of 2%. This quickly lead to an angry/happy quotient of approximately 0.95, and a probability of the angler being a moron of 1.

Twenty minutes and a mile of circular walking later and the much more friendly 5 weight shotgun Sage was strung up with a similar setup. Despite the excellent casting possibilities afforded by the new approach the end result was still a consistent 0 fish. There was also no hatch, no sign of rising fish and a bit of general malaise on the part of all concerned.

I wandered upstream, trying my best to spook something which at least looked like a fish, and didn’t even succeed in this task. The feeling at the waterside was really quite odd. Blasting sunshine and blazing hot, with almost no aquatic activity of which to speak. It seemed more like the middle of August than a time of the year I always look forward to in the hope of hatching olives.

The obvious move was to put up a dry fly and blank with that instead of battling with the increasing wind and the convoluted nymphing setup. On went a wee dirty duster, and some minutes were passed in a semi-doze at the water’s edge. I saw no more rises behind my eyelids than on the river’s surface, so went back to some casting practice up the next run.

Quite suddenly there was a rise barely 3 meters ahead. I paused, then flicked the fly up above the rise, all whilst doing my best impersonation of a lifeless tree. This was a kind fish, for he instantly engulfed the fly and gave a really excellent scrap before coming to the net. A very respectable 16″ (not weighed), in great condition. I made special note to remove my excessively yellow-tinted polaroids to admire the iridescent sheen to the gill flaps, then held him in the current just a bit longer than needed.

The mystery of a dead river coming to life in the form of a spotted brown trout, held for a few moments in my hands. The seeming impossibility of it all is what fascinates and frustrates and delights during any day on the river. It’s the mystery that’s magic.

A flash gallery of all my selected photos from today’s trip. This is a test really, not sure if I’ll use it again. Click the full screen button for a 3D-like immersive experience.

The weekend past fell in the middle of a fairly remarkable period of spring weather. I say spring, but it’s really been more like summer, with temperatures well above 20C, a very light south westerly and a general feeling of the goodlife. I say summer, but as local residents of this country will attest, such words don’t always inspire memories of beaming sunshine and melting ice creams.

Saturday awoke like a world with dew still on it. I say this not just for the well-placed Norman McLean reference, but because it was true. Beautiful, big drops of dew all over the grass. Promising start.

I decided to head for water which I’d skipped at the last moment the week before when I opted for a closer-to-home season opener. This time I made good time, arriving at the waterside, new polaroids at the ready, before 11am. A few olives peeled themselves off the water and lazily fluttered upstream in the slightest drift of a breeze. An upstream breeze here is quite rare, and even rarer when coupled with pleasant weather.

I watched the water for a good half hour. Plenty of time to make up the season’s first 15 foot dry fly leader. The season’s first olive-hatch-matching dry fly was a deer hair emerger. Nothing new to see here..

A few fish were rising in a run on the far side, but to get there would require a short hike upstream to cross in shallower water. The minds ticks slowly at moments like this, as it weighs up the likely benefits of going to all that hassle, possibly for a couple of small fish, while a sixth sense (also known as prior experience in this case) suggests it’s worth staying put and waiting. I waited.

A large, water-pushing rise in mid-stream. A second fish just upstream of my right-bank position. I opted to try for the nearer second fish. After a couple of ‘come-short’ rises where my strike resulted in hooking thin air, finally a solid take and an enthusing tussle before a beautiful 12oz spring brownie came to hand. Thoughts of taking fish like this on a dry fly in April take up large chunks of musing-time between October and March.

Time to concentrate on the creature pushing around all that water in mid-stream. I watched for another 5 minutes as olive after olive met their demise, with a few March brown’s thrown in for measure. I made some pleasingly drag-free drifts (at least I thought they were drag-free) with no response. Feeling a bit desperate, I added the secret weapon of a mini leopard-print skirt to the DHE and tried again. Suitably dragged-up, the fly was annihilated in a large splashy rise and I watched with some disbelief as my fly line payed out in a quick-step across the river.

A long fight followed, during which I had time to variously contemplate that I might be about to break my personal brown trout record, I might be about to loose an amazing fish, I’m sure I’m going to loose this whopper, and finally I’m about to wet myself. Some minutes passed, but I could barely move the bulk of fish attached to my line, and held on in hope as it repeatedly stripped off huge reams of fly line. At last it decided to investigate the nearside bank, and I managed to gain most of the line back. As the fish swam around and around in front of me, I got my first proper glimpse. What I saw was not very brown, or very trouty. It did, however, make my net look quite comically small.

Some careful maneuvering and as much side-strain as my 5-weight rod could bear and the silvery fish swam headfirst into the aforementioned comical net. The tail remained thoroughly beyond the rim. I threw my rod onto the bank, and paused for a handful of seconds to cradle the fish. And what a fish. Shining silver, deep-forked tail, a smattering of spots above the lateral line. I’m not a migratory fisherman, but I believed then, and do now, that it was a fine spring salmon of about 8-9lb. Not huge for a springer, but in excellent condition (with the exception of some possible net damage on the head). And caught fairly and in good faith on a size 16 deer hair emerger during a spring olive hatch.

A bit bizzare, and a one-off I’d have thought if it hadn’t already happened 2 seasons ago. I’ve since been in touch with a fisheries biologist to recount these unexpected spring catches, and he has confirmed that such things happen every season in Scotland. Quite why salmon feed on fly hatches like this is not clear. Whether they gain any nutritional benefit is also unclear, and probably unlikely given that the stomach lining of a salmon begins to disintegrate in fresh water. But rise they do.

I must confess to feeling a bit short-changed at the time, given the several minutes during which I thought I might have a genuine whopper-trout on the line. It’s been quite a few seasons since I’ve had that privilege. In retrospect, however, that’s perhaps a bit of a silly way to think. I now feel rather grateful to have had an encounter with a fish that’s been to Greenland and back, and that it so-appreciated my dragged-up deer hair emerger.

The season is now open on all rivers. Today I kicked off my own fishing year by wandering down to a local small stream for a few lazy hours. Over the past 24 hours or so we’ve had a bit of rain, so I was expecting there to be a good bit of water pushing through. Indeed the river was a bit coloured, but not overly high. The pale brown tinge emphasised the early season feel, complementing the blustery breeze and fleeting sunshine.

I saw 5 upwinged flies in 4 hours of pottering about. Not exactly a bonanza hatch, but a warming reminder that the time is fast coming where dry flies may be used without irony.

I started off with a tungsten-beadhead nondescript nymph. I lost it first cast in the branches above my head. The lovely orange indicator/float I intended to use for take detection immediately pinged off and sailed away downstream as I hopelessly jiggered the rod trying to free the nymph. The distinct feeling of the season passing early comment on my dubious methods passed over along with darkening clouds and a stiffening wind.

I decided to replace the beadhead job with a more castable nymph, and second cast a pretty little brownie gobbled it up. Such quick success, sometimes a good omen, but generally not.

First cast after returning the trout and another encounter with an overhanging branch. Another attempted jiggle of the line and another pinged indicator. I made a mental note to head up the hill later on to stock up on sheep’s wool, these modern mini-football indicators just don’t stay on fine tippet very well.

For the rest of the day I opted for the comedy dry fly routine, and fished a wee dirty duster. This felt much better balanced on my light line setup, and I finally started to remember how the whole casting thing was supposed to work. Moments later and a single rise spotted. First cast truly dreadful, an over-gunned, under-slacked cockup job. Second cast and a rise and take, hooked for a few moments then lost. Would have been slightly larger than the first, but nothing remarkable. No worries, there aren’t that many remarkable fish in this bit of river anyway. At least I’ve never come across any.

I gave up about 4pm, opting for a relaxing evening of watching clouds (see next post). Luckily, we’ve got lots of them around here, and plenty big ones at that.

It’s funny how things creep up on you. My last strong memories of fishing were back in April and May, with the season getting into full swing. Large olives and March Browns on the water, clear spring sunshine, and all the season ahead.

Somehow most of the middle part of the year seems to have gone begging, sucked away into the vortex of new job life and ‘other commitments’. It was thus with some excitement that I planned an evening down at a favourite summer haunt last night.

This time of year and this river always speak to me one acronym loud and clear, BWO. I arrived hoping there would be a blue-winged olive spinner fall, and over the next two hours I got as much and more.

The air was abuzz with life. Male BWO spinners danced up and down in columns and sputtered into my polaroid glasses as I crossed the first field. As I crouched by the waters edge, there were thick swarms of gnats rolling up and down over the riffly pools in that curious, pulsating manner. Every few moments a silver sedge torpedoed into my jacket. Pale wateries were on the wing, as well as a host of terrestrials. A summer river in full life, surely one of angling’s greatest treats.

I set up with a longish leader and a size 16 F-fly, fairly typical fare for such conditions. A few small trout quickly got quite excited by this offering, but it still felt like I was somewhat overgunning things. So I dropped back, first to a little BWO sherry spinner, and finally to a size 22 nondescript greyish spinner thingy, at which point I started to get much more confident rises. Little sups, often impossible to see amid the rolling water.

Moonrise.

I’ve said it before in these pages (as I’m quite sure have many others before me) that fishing like this on summer evenings has a feel much more like upstream nymphing than the dry fly fishing of spring. It’s a hilariously frustrating task trying to track a size 22 greyish fly as it tumbles over greyish seams topped with hundreds of size 22 greyish bubbles. Intuition, I think they call it.

By half 8 it was getting distinctly darkish, and within 40 minutes the moon was the main light source. I slowly fished on up through knee deep seams and runs, getting the occasional sup, or at least imagining so.

There’s a wonderful calm in fishing the dusk session at this time of year. The night descends, the air cools sharply, the water tugs ever so slightly heavier at your ankles. Fishing a very short line now, maybe 2 yards of fly line out the tip, trying to impart a bit of extra flick to push the leader out. Spot a sup, cast over it, a bit too far right, try again, it’s short, and again, that’s just about right…. “    “   …. that’s the sound of a ‘sup’ by the way. Jerk the rod upright in mild surprise, missed another one, move on a yard, try again…

There’s this mesmerising rhythm, which I think is ever intensified by the diminishing light level which has a kind of focusing effect, like slowly turning the barrel of a camera lens and seeing things more clearly. With each passing minute, each drop in the available light, you have to concentrate that bit harder, so you are more entranced, and another minute passes, and the earth continues on its arc away from light, and I continue on my arc towards it.

As in all fishing it’s the lines and seams, the drop-offs and edges, that are most interesting. I think that holds especially true for the line between day and night, and nowhere can that be more clearly felt than passing a few hours in the company of a summer evening on the river.

It’s almost a month since I’ve been on a river or loch. And with the hit and (mostly) miss season I’ve been having on most of my usual beats I decided on Sunday that it was time to explore a bit. An important lesson I’ve learned over the past few seasons, however, is that to explore does not necessarily mean to travel far.

So it was with some excitement that a fishing pal and I stalked through woods and across fallow fields towards a hidden stream which slid quietly through the undergrowth. We arrived to find the water running slightly high and with a beautiful Ardbeg tinge. After the barren month of June all this recent rain suddenly felt rather welcome.

We tackled up under a tunnel of overhanging trees. Upstream the late afternoon light crept through the layers of canopy and twinkled all over the streamy runs and pools. The feeling of anticipation on such days is tangibly electric. I wasn’t expecting anything big, indeed that was not the point at all. It was something else, much less describable, to do with the combination of yellow light, yellow bellies and the perpetual flow of clear water.

I flited about between fishing a small dry terrestrial and putting up a similarly small nymphal offering. Hope prevailed (as it seems to when on a river) and on went the dry. Some poor wading, poor casting and generally shocking rivercraft soon put paid to the first few pools. By the time a large, slow bend pool was reached however, I’d come down a few sizes to a no. 22 nondescript grey spinner and was once again feeling optimistic.

After several further failed attempts I finally managed to concoct the right combination of airy cast, steady feet and luck, and the first yellow-belly came scrapping back towards me. A couple more followed before we moved upstream as the sun dropped lower and coolness started to fold itself around the valley.

I switched to a wee brown-wire nymph, but our dutiful comrade stuck to his guns with a dirty duster and was rewarded with a pool of multiple rising trout. A couple of LDRs followed before finally his first brownie of the season came to hand, followed in quick succession by a brace more.

Twenty minutes later and the fish were still sipping at some indeterminable surface offerings, but a mutual decision was made to draw things to a close and go in search of a mucherious goodfoodus (pizza). This we achieved with not even a hint of a long distance release.

A quiet evening yesterday, a couple of half pounders on the nymph and one lunker spooked. Otherwise I think we need rain, the river was extremely low, certainly little chance of sea trout running. Very easy to spook the better brownies as well. There were a good number of blue-winged olives out though, promising frustration and possibly joy in the coming weeks.

As a fly angler I’ve come to feel pretty comfortable with trout. So whilst I still have a long way to go down that bumbling road towards trout nirvana, I do now have some idea about their typical habits and ways of eating (or not eating) my flies. If they’re surface feeding, in particular, things can sometimes be so beautifully obvious. Floating dark olive duns trickling down river runs, trout slurping at the surface, and me flailing a carbon stick with a bit of duck’s arse attached to it.

Regular readers of this blog, however, will know about my minor obsession with grayling. A couple of years back I had a period of concentrated winter grayling fishing where I tried hard to become a competent nymph fisherman. I wanted so dearly to understand the subtleties of fishing nymphs to the silver grayling that I know inhabit many waters close to where I live. I did have some success, particularly when a good pal showed me exactly where to fish. But I was left with the nagging feeling that to reach the same level of comfort I’d attained with spring trout would take much more effort.

Graying spend most of their time close to the bottom of rivers, feeding off the bugs that crawl around down there. This is something I’ve read many times, and have also grown to accept as largely true for many of the rivers I fish here in Scotland. I have caught grayling on dry flies, but never to the same size or with the same consistency as I’ve had on nymphs. This makes it sound like I’ve had consistency with nymphs. Relative consistency, relative.

Recently I find myself most interested in grayling as the trout season is dying. This is partly due to seeing the remarkable success that some of my pals have had at such times. It’s also because I’ve noticed on quite a few occasions recently that there seems to be a distinct increase in the prevalence of grayling relative to trout at that time of the season, particularly on some of the waters I visit. I wonder if it’s a localised thing, or if it’s simply because I tend to fish nymphs and spiders more often as the levels of surface activity decline. Whatever the case, I enjoy spending a sunny September afternoon by the side of a favourite small stream, searching out the deeper pockets of water and hoping for the electric moment when yet another minor snag becomes a bristling bar of silver enthusiasm.

This year I decided to keenly concentrate my September efforts on a small section of a small stream I like to fish. I tried to visit as often as possible, hoping that with time I would develop a better understanding for the moods and architecture of my chosen retreat. I was also hoping that maybe, just maybe I’d get a glimpse at a more comfortable truce with the nervous twitch of a grayling’s tail.

On one of my first visits to the river I arrived and set up a wee 8′ rod and a 3 weight line. I tied on a whopping monster of a dry fly, something like the lovechild of a chernobyl ant and a coch y bonddu. Let’s call it a Tammy’s Terror. I had the bizzare notion that if I couldn’t nymph the grayling out of their secret lies, I’d tempt them up for a gobble at the Terror. So enthused and convinced was I by this wonderful idea that I strode up to the nearest looking bend, planning to survey ‘my territory’ for the most opportune pools, and completely spooked three enormous grayling. The Terror, it seemed, had terrorised.

I caught one fish on that day, to a little peacock herl nymph. It almost stretched from the base of my hand, across the vast expanse of wrinkles and peaks that cover my palm, to the bottom of my fingers. Yes, on the same hand. It was a grayling though, and was caught fairly on a nymph. Five hours of fishing and only one (tiny) fish, but categorical success wasn’t on my mind. Nope, the only thing I could see when I closed my eyes that night was an action replay of three giant Terrorfied grayling making like hay in all directions.

There was only one thing for it, I had to phone that most interesting of gods, the grayling god. Unfortunately I don’t have his phone number any more, as apparently gods, even grayling ones, do sometimes migrate. So I emailed him instead (he is a he). Several long exchanges later and I was feeling ready for the second wave. Small, tungsten-beaded peacock herl nymphs were tied up, and the nearest sheep found itself plundered of some lovely fluffy white wool.

I consider fishing for good-sized trout or grayling in a small stream to be amongst the loveliest of of the many lovely ways to spend a day. The only problem is that with enough anticipation, sweaty palms and enthusiastic optimism, any lovely activity can end up being a little disappointing. I thus tried hard to control my usual fantasies, aiming for a calculated, hunter-gatherer ethos. Hate the fish, hate the damn fish. Must. Kill. Fish. [Political aside: I love grayling too much to kill them, that is what is known in the Isle of Britain as a 'joke'.]

I arrived at the place of Terror as a beautiful September morning gave way to a beautiful September afternoon. Clouds shuffled across the sky in a nice orderly fashion, occasionally thinning for long enough to allow some golden autumn sun to light up the river banks. I put up the 18′ leader that the grayling god had mentioned, including about 5′ of thin tippet. On the end went a peacock herl nymph, quickly followed 4′ above by a pinch of the stolen white fleece. I crept up.

After watching trout parr dancing in a shallow flat pool for about half an hour, it was clear that the grayling, were they still around, would be in the deeper water upstream. I slid into the water, creating a rapidly traveling wave of parr that I was sure would spook anything this side of Glasgow. I crossed the river in three paces and climbed up the far side. Now on my stomach, I frog-crawled upstream, peering hard into the deeper seams. If only I could spot a fish, and know where to cast, it would have given me supreme confidence. After eying a particularly fish-like shape for ten minutes, I began to grow impatient. More minutes passed, and the debate in my head swung markedly towards the ‘lump of mud’ camp.

The whole escapade seemed to be veering dangerously towards the tourist’s favourite sentence involving weather and ‘last week’. So I debunked downstream, sent off another shockwave of parr on re-entry, and started to creep slowly back up towards the run.

The landscape is particularly interesting at this spot. The river describes a slow, continuous bend, over a distance of about 30 yards. The right hand bank (looking upstream) seems to have collapsed on itself many times, leaving a strange pattern of ridges and islands. The Quiraing in miniature. It means that there are a couple of pronounced ‘grooves’ in the river channel, where the flow has been squeezed between bits of collapsed bank. If a grayling was going to be anywhere, surely one of those deeper runs would be the place.

Hearing the voice of the grayling god in my ears, I set myself up for a false-cast-free flick cast. A 10 yard loop of line hung in the current downstream, my rod pointing at it and the wee nymph pinched between the finger and thumb of my left hand. I slowly swung the rod upstream, quickening and quickening andthenagentleflick. As long as you let go of the nymph at the right time, this cast works remarkably well, and puts no fly line whatsoever above any upstream lying fish. On that first occasion the drifting breeze caught the line and dumped the whole lot too far to the left, in an area of dead water. Two or three times more the same ritual was repeated, with the same result. I finally plucked up the courage to really go for it, and was momentarily delighted to see the cast stretch out beautifully in front of me, and right over the deep run.

I say momentarily, because the cast was too good. The nymph had been grabbed by one of the islands, and the whole cast lay tensioned out in front of me. A quick and precise application of tweakage, along with a not-so-quick-and-not-so-precise application of poor language and the nymph skipped free and plopped into the water. It was at this point that everything started to go slow. Non-fishers will think I’m trying to make this dramatic (I am), but it really does have some truth in it. Perhaps it was all the time-wasting that preceded, but as the cast twisted and drifted down the run I had enough time to remind myself to strike at anything.

The wool behaved perfectly as the current dictated, shifting left, then right as it entered the narrowest part of the channel. I instinctively raised the rod as it came close, ready for the next cast. Then suddenly, with the wool just a couple of metres upstream, it paused. Not a pull, not dive, just a short little think. I twitched the rod up, and within a fraction of a second a beautiful big grayling materialised from the run, gills flared, pectoral fins erect and dorsal at full mast. I have the most vidid image burned into my mind of that moment, when a tumbling stream turned into a tumbling stream containing a fighting grayling. I can see it now, appearing from the deep like a mini-zeppelin suddenly released from its stream bed cage.

One of the funny things about small streams is that there’s only so much water in which to swim. The grayling first headed upstream, before thinking better of it and bolting downstream between my legs, and straight into a waiting net. Seconds from minding his own business above the safety of a gravel run, to being in some buffoon’s landing net. Needless to say, your writer was pretty chuffed.

Despite all my egging and building up, the grayling wasn’t even that big, certainly not by the standards of some that are caught in Scotland. 1.5lb dead on, and 14″. But for a stream that Jonathan Edwards could easily skip over, I think him remarkable nonetheless. Typical trout up in those parts are measured in small numbers of ounces, not pounds.

It’s fascinating that certain fish are able to adapt to the available feeding and grow on so well compared to the more established species. The plentiful evidence of cased caddis and other nymphs seems to back this up. I’ve been told that the general feeding strategy of grayling is quite different to that of trout. Trout of less than a pound or two spend much of their time ‘drift feeding’, holding in the current and waiting to intercept passing nymphs. Grayling on the other hand are more proactive, and use their overhanging mouth to grub around and seek out nymphs on the bottom. I’ve seen this behaviour once or twice, and others I know have seen it much more often than that.

Back on the river I managed to winkle out another lovely grayling, almost a twin brother to the first, from a deep pocket further upstream. It’s a funny way of fishing really. Hours of false takes as the nymph snags on something, interspersed with occasional moments of pure excitement when the snag starts shaking and swimming around. Spring dry fly fishing it ain’t, but there is a strangely elusive charm to it all.

I can’t help but feel that those September days have indeed helped me to get a bit further along the path to grayling comfort. I’m still a good way off being consistent, but I think that by fishing long leaders, small nymphs and by stalking slowing, I’ve improved my approach a lot. A quiet demon, however, is still waving the Terror in front of my polaroids.

Maybe. In Pink.

The last couple of weeks have been much warmer than the blustery chill of early spring. I’ve been watching in wonder as the evenings have pulled away into endless fading blue and orange, waiting for the right moment to have a proper evening session. Last Tuesday morning I resolved to head out straight from work, just before five, hoping to be fishing well before six.

As I drove my mind flickered between locations. I always find this the difficult bit, which exit to take.. I eventually decided on a bit of small stream action on my favourite of small streams. However, as I drove close to its bigger brother, I felt inexplicably lured to have a go there instead. Time was short, so I stopped at the nearest access point (ok it’s not the nearest, but near enough the nearest) and pulled on my waders.

Looking around me the light was really beautiful, a piercing warm orange glow as the sun passed close to a storm cloud. The cloud seemed to encourage the wind too, for it was merrily puffing away as I strung up the 5-weight. I vaulted the nearest fence and made like a ferret across the field in a downstream direction. I say made like a ferret, but that’s not really a particularly accurate statement of fact, as indeed the fact was that with at least one broken rib I probably made more like a wheezing, crippled goat across the field.

I walked for a while, until I was well downstream of my target pool. Standing in the riffles beyond the tail, it looked sumptuous in the evening light, swirling eddies and foam lines like a mass of jumbled contours on a map. I slowly edged forward..

An hour later I slumped myself down on the bank and scratched my nose. Parr rising and splashing all over the place, and nothing else. I’d carefully fished more than halfway up the pool on dries, and things were ending up looking more like a session of casting practice. I turned over the idea of chucking a streamer down through the riffles and into the pool below, but it somehow didn’t feel right on such a beautiful evening.

On a complete whim I decided to put up a pair of small nymphs and fish them upstream through the rest of the pool. I slid myself off the bank and slowly ambled a few feet into the water. It had been many moons since I last fished nymphs like this, so after letting the current lengthen the line I pulled up the leader and slipped a tiny foam indicator about 3 feet above the top nymph. At last satisfied with my setup, I made a cast upstream and slightly across.

It can be a funny business fishing nymphs like this. In the winter I have failed many times to catch grayling using such techniques, growing steadily more frustrated as each little bob and stop of the indicator turns out to be a piece of weed or a rock. Second cast up, and as the indicator was brought back to me by the current, it paused for thought about 2 or 3 metres upstream of where I was standing. I pulled my rod up and stripped in the slack and found myself attached to a moving rock. It swam in a small circle, before heading downstream towards the riffles. I caught a glimpse of a silvery side as it flashed past.

It didn’t take long to realise that not only was the rock not a rock (two nots don’t make a right…), but it wasn’t a trout either. Finally drawing the fish towards me I saw a gigantic dorsal fin, which flipped over from side to side as I slid the net through the water and under him. A beautiful spring grayling, not really a fish to be targetted at this time of year, but nevertheless a welcome surprise. A quick look at the weigh-net scales showed he was a smidgen over 2.5lb, a real beauty in any river, and in absolutely cracking condition. I know the grayling should be getting into spawning season very soon, if not already, but you wouldn’t really have known it from this fish.

After slipping the grayling back I fished on for another hour but connected with nothing else bar a few enthusiastic parr. I don’t know if I’ve ever had such an immediate and superb response from a change in tactics. I was undoubtedly lucky to come across such an apparently solitary large grayling, but it was still a really good feeling to think that I managed to do everything else right. Perhaps I’ll have to give the winter lark another try..

Just to round out a truly fantastic evening, on the way back to my car I came across a cute wee hedgehog padding through the grass. I tried to get a close up, and was greeted with the spiky-football treatment.

April has been a very mixed month of a few glorious highs sprinkled sparsely amongst a shower of blanks. I’ve been too busy to make posts for each of my outings, so I’m going to blurt it all out here in a wonna or a twoer.

Back on the 7th I went down to a nice bit of water known to produce the odd monster. I was hoping for (April) March Browns. As I crawled up to the water I immediately spotted a couple of wonderful swirls. Adjusting my gaze above the water’s surface I quickly made out ranks of tell-tale zeppelins fluttering upstream.

The slightest upstream wind warmed my neck, and that feeling of infinite possibility crept out from its winter hibernation. The sight of rising fish in spring always convinces me that having a six month closed season is worth it, if only for the heightened sense of joy come April. Senses dulled by months of time away from the water find themselves jolted back to life. Memories and feelings thought passed forever return with renewed vigour. What a great time of year.

I stealthily stumbled down to the water’s edge and tried to take in the sight of multiple rising fish before me. Which to choose?

I decided that the most steadily rising fish, twenty yards upstream, looked the most temptable. I began a slow waddle through the thigh-deep water, suddenly more afraid than ever of spooking my newly-reacquainted adversaries.

I paused and prepared to cast by letting the current pull out a long loop of line downstream. As I looked around to check the line for tangles a fish swirled aggressively in the seam just off to my left, barely five yards downstream and across from where I stood.

Gift horses in the mouth and all that, I decided to have a speculative chuck. Two drifts produced nothing more than a nice V-wake as my DHE dragged downstream. I tried a third cast, incorporating a ludicrously over-exagerated upwards motion to try and produce a parachute cast. The fly and cast landed nicely and started to slip downstream. As the cast neared the point of no-drag-free-drift return the fish came up and engulfed the fly. By some twist of luck or ironed-in instinct I struck nicely and the fish was on.

As fly-angling readers will know it can take a trip or two to really get back into things after a winter away from all things fishy-tailed. This is particularly true for playing hooked fish, which can be an art-form in itself. The recently-attached fish paid no ounce of thought for this as it screeched off across the river at full pelt. There was little need to put the coils of loose line back on the reel as within moments they were distinctly straightened and heading for the far line of trees. I tightened up the reel and tried to lever the fish back in my direction. This succeeded in transmitting a message to the fish that the only route of escape was upwards, which was exactly where it headed, twisting and turning in the sunshine.

Some moments passed, and as I started to get control of things I got a good look at the cause of all the trouble. Hmm…distinctly silver flashes, but was it just the light? I finally slipped the net underneath the water and drew the fish over the rim. Glory hallelujah, it was silvery all right. Long, slightly lean, full-spotted and shimmering with blue-silver energy, it was unmistakably a sea trout. I popped off the handle of my weigh-net and the scales drew down to just a smidgen over 4lb. Regular readers may know that I’ve been on the hunt for a sea trout for some time, and have failed quite miserably to ever catch one using conventional wisdom. Well, there on that beautiful spring morning, March Browns a-buzzing, I caught my first sea trout, with dry fly and floating line. Not the worst start to a season I’ve ever had.

I had a good look at the fish as I cradled it in the current. Despite its silvery sheen and keen battle-spirit, I guessed that it was a kelt. Its lower tail was quite badly torn up, which I thought may have been due to spawning frolics. But who knows? Maybe it had just had a run-in with a seal on its way up the estuary. Whatever the case, its short visit to have a chat with me opened a little jar of happiness by that quiet riverbank.

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.

It’s a small stream, and the water is low. Everywhere parr dart amongst the streamer weed and shoals of fry waft forward and back in the current. Small fish water. A few early grannom buzz along upstream, tempting thoughts of a rise. The odd olive and clouds of gnats drift in the soft breeze. It’s spring and the warm sun and cool air soak deep.

A bigger pool. A bigger tree, half in half out of the water. Creeping up, little casts and slow breaths. A pause which lingers for a gaze into the deepest crease. Then you see him. A brown submarine drifting slowly, slowly up and into the very eye. Three, four, five, the weight matters not for he will not be landed today. The floppy four weight quivering in your right fist feels obsurd.
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My pal and I have been watching the weather closely over the last few weeks, desperate for a window of opportunity. The rain slacked off a little bit towards the end of the weekend, and yesterday the weather was fantastic. The river levels were also looking superb. All in all, perfect conditions for getting the grayling excited. Unfortunately, we didn’t go fishing yesterday. No, we went today.

I looked out the window at 8am whilst my tasty brown bread toasted away, waiting to receive its coating of chocolate spread. The ground was slightly damp, but the sky looked clear and in a few minutes the sun began to squeeze through the last remaining clouds, shedding weak winter rays into the kitchen. Surely the conditions were good. No rain at midnight, no rain this morning.
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