Category — Fishing trips

“We are the dollars and cents and the pounds and pence”. (TY)

Probably a thousand quid of rods and narry a fish. April on Tay.
Beautiful.

Fishing mojo has been on my mind lately. In terms of fish caught I’ve had a terrible start to the season. I’ve fished incredibly passively, expecting fish to throw themselves at my line. This seems like the anti-thesis of fly fishing: you should have to hunt down the trout and earn their takes. It’s all about the mind of course. Sometimes, and it pains me to say it, the mind is not right for fishing.

Yesterday I headed down to a favourite spot hoping to dig deep and find some mojo. I took the unusual step of stringing up my 8′ 3 weight rod instead of the shotgun Sage. My elbow has basically been buggered by my casting practice this winter so light rods are now mandatory. It’s nice to find blessings in every curse, and rediscovering a love of fishing light is surly a worthy blessing from my painful curse. It’s a totally different feeling from using the 5 weight, one where the rod seems much more like an extension of the arm and the casts quietly swish past with only a thought. I actually enjoyed fishing again, and came pretty close to the place on several occasions.

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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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The new season started three weeks ago on some of my rivers. In the spirit of current times though, a sudden batch of cold weather seems to have pushed everything back a good bit. Last weekend I was out with some pals on a favourite bit of water. It was bright and breezy, but the general weather situation was cold air dribbling down from the north east. Apparently this isn’t very good for encouraging spring rises because the olives nick off too quickly from the surface. I don’t know if this is true, but the trout certainly seemed to think so. Despite some march browns, dark olives and loads of stoneflies there was narry a rise all day.

Yesterday and another river. This stretch was new for me, but clearly has potential as a big fish water in spring. The weather was bright once again, but this time the air also had a tinge of warmth. The water temperature seemed ideal and the level was very low. No rises again. Perhaps I missed the rise as I only got there after 1pm, but the other anglers I spoke to also seemed to have found things difficult. I searched the water with a wee olive emerger, and managed two modest trout and a nice lunker grayling. Incredible really: a shockingly bad winter grayling season and then I catch a cracker on a dry on the first day of the trout season.

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The new season bug has finally hit. It’s been a long five months away from my friend the trout and my arch enemy the grayling has been a tortuous winter companion. I really don’t understand the total and utter failure with the grayling this winter. It has certainly not come through a lack of time, effort or frozen testicles. All of these things have been offered to the Lady with humble servitude but it seems She has been occupied elsewhere.

Well, I’ve arrived at a mental service station and before long it’ll be back along the road to trout city. It’s that time of year where opening day creeps over the dashboard and into view. I’ve been thinking about what the new season might hold and between fits of flashbacks from previous years a few new thoughts have crystallised.

This is going to be the year of the Spey. Last season a pal of mine called Ally taught me how to roll cast properly and it soon became a critical part of my fishing arsenal. Having said that I almost never use a standard roll cast, not with groovy alternatives like the snake roll and the double Spey. These days I can Spey cast almost as far as I can overhead cast, which either means I’m an absolute god of casting or my overhead needs work. Spey casting is unbeatable for fishing spiders and streamers across and down, and dry flies in tight corners. One of the great benefits is the lack of turbo-fish-spooking as caused by overhead flailing.

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The past couple of weeks have brought a new kind of fishing low. The winter grayling fishing got off to a bad start earlier this month with high water and cold extremities. The fact that my (more experienced) fishing pal blanked as well was possibly a small consolation, but some early damage to the fishing confidence was nevertheless dealt.

Carefully playing down this feat I tried to paint a rosy picture to my brother. Images of crisp winter sunshine, secret pools and massive grayling enticed him down from the north east to spend a few days here. I described short, relaxing days spent prospecting for monsters. The evenings would bring searing hot curry at our favourite joint and a few pints of the best of beers to round things off.

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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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Posts have been a little more frequent of late. This is possibly because the end of the season is nigh and I’m kind of cramming in the posts in knowledge of lean months ahead.
Well I was down on my fave bit of water for perhaps the last time until March. It was a strange day in some ways. The weather was very changable, from sunshine that warmed the back of your neck to a cutting breeze from upstream, to steady rain. I love this kind of weather because the quality of the light between the rain storms is fantastic, vivid and moody. It can also spell good angling ahead, at least between the rain showers.

The fishing started off with a good few small grayling. Small as in 3 ounces. Not exactly rod bending stuff. They were rising pretty steadily, though possibly to some very small midges or terrestrials or something similar. Not long after lunch there was a very light hatch of BWOs. Bear in mind this is now October. BWO in october..?! Is that normal? It was certainly mild between the rain showers. It was interesting to see these were much lighter and more yellowy than the BWO of July and August.

After a wee while I opted to fish a lightly weighted nymph under my standard DHE. All was working out ok (despite no fish) until I saw something funny near my fly. It looked like a bit of clear weed, and on closer inspection it might as well have been. How the hell I got a tangle like this I don’t know but it was bad enough to merit a photee.

After a while and maybe a couple of missed takes it was time for a change of tactics so on with the ardsely bombers and away with the casting. I’ve spent so much time fishing these short line tactics in the last few years, usually in the winter, and it’s nice to actually catch a few fish at last. I’m soon to be getting a longer rod, part of the reason being for such methods. I think it’s much more effective than fishing a nymph under a dry, at least in the right water. A couple of trout and some more micro-grayling took a tungsten beaded monster and a garish pink shrimp.

It was a lovely day, in large part because I managed to avoid falling in. A modest number of fish were very gratefully received at this late stage in the season, all of which fought well and looked in great condition. Hopefully they will spawn succesfully and bring us plenty more memorable days next year. Here’s to the season past and the one to come.

Today has left me feeling confused, excited and sad all at once. I had one of my more memorable days down on one of the auld haunts. To understand where I’m coming from, it helps to understand a little about what this bit of river is like. The word dour was invented specifically for it. I’ve made one or two posts about it previously, after catching begger all. This is quite normal. However, as is so often the case, the dourest places can hold the biggest trout.

The water was beautiful today, perhaps the nicest colour and height I’ve seen it this season. When the sun shines right the whole river bed lights up and the water glows a light whisky yellow. I remember the first time I fished this river, after only having fished on the Kelvin in Glasgow. I hadn’t imagined rivers were this clear anywhere in Scotland.

The more I fish this bit of water the more I’m mystified. It is clearly very healthy in terms of insect life, at least under the surface. Turning a few stones over I was pleased to see huge cased sedge larva, upwing nymphs and even freshwater shrimp which I hadn’t seen here before. But despite this the river just doesn’t seem to hold the population of ‘average’ catchable fish you’d expect. In a way you can think about it like some of the New Zealand rivers, where there are small numbers of lunkers separated by not much.

And there’s an example of one of the best of the ‘not much’ I caught all day. I fished hard all morning, then into mid afternoon before I found any fish rising. And then it was just these wee chaps who were possibly taking terrestrials falling off the trees. Using the smallest fly I could find it wasn’t very difficult to get takes from them. I gave up and moved on after a while because I don’t think it’s healthy for me or the river to hook parr like that.

So after having fished everything from tiny sedges to massive tunsten nymphs I started heading upriver towards the car. I decided to stop for a wee while at a known pool. The pool you might say. It’s the kind of place that just has to hold one or two biggies. Not that I’ve ever seen a fart’s chance in the Arctic’s sign of any.

Except today. Today I saw some fish. I saw two, maybe three nice fish. One of which was friggin big. Like the length of my arm. But I didn’t catch him because he only rose once, shortly after which he spooked the hell out of there. But I did manage to land a beautiful trout of around 11oz after casting to one of the smallest rises I’d seen all day. To describe a fish like this as gold dust up there is maybe wrong. No, it’s definitely wrong. More like huge hand sized chunks of gold studded with diamonds and sitting on a big chocolate gateau.

When I hooked him I was convinved it was a 1.5lber. Had to be, there was a bend in the rod after all. And he jumped about like a maniac. And he was longer than my eh, finger. All said, I was really thrilled to catch him. One of my hardest worked for fish of the season. Sod that, by far my hardest worked for fish as I’ve had about 5 trips down to the river and he’s about as big as all the other fish put together. Crazing game, fishing.

Last weekend I met up with the pal Al, and headed down to a nice bit of water. Once again the conditions seemed good, but once again the clock chimed that it was late in the season, and the trout were thinking of other things.

We both started off with dries, myself putting up the usual emerger pattern. I worked up some lovely runs, but only one take registered the effort, and came so out of the blue that it was missed. Desperation began to take hold and I tackled up nymphs that were three months heavier than usual. I refer of course to the deep nymphs of winter grayling fishing, but the river seemed as dead as any December afternoon.

It wasn’t too long before I found some fish. First a small grayling, then a better one from precicely the same spot. Great to see them starting to shoal up, in ones and two at the moment but soon to be more, let’s hope! A couple of trout followed from an adjacent seam, and the hint of a beaming grin passed across the cheeks.

The sun began to sink before I knew it, and it wasn’t too long before I followed in a similar fashion into the river. For some reason I only seem to get properly wet when I’m fishing with the Al pal. Has to be some kind of voodoo curse involved. Having said that, there wasn’t too much involved beyond idiocy when trying to wade through a 5′ deep hole.

This weekend I headed a little South to fish with the brother again. We fished all day using every method known to the (moderately) self-respecting fly-man but couldn’t connect with much beyond parr. The end of the season feels close. It is close, barely a week away.

In the end I guess everyone deals with the end of a season in their own way. I tend to feel pretty philosophical about the whole thing and try to look at things in perspective. The close season is really a good thing. It concentrates the mind and you get so much more out of the months you can get on the river. And if I’m still saying that in Feburary, I’ll eat all the hats.