Despite the snide remarks of non-angling (and even angling come to mention it) pals, I stand by my comments as genuine. If the only reason I went fishing was to hook a trout and then slip it back, I suspect my interest might not have remained at such a fever pitch for such a long time. The act of fooling a spring trout on a dry is of course one of life’s finest pleasures, and one that only becomes more appreciated with time. But the brutal fact is that, at least on the rivers where I fish, it’s impossible to ever be sure of finding rising fish.

Over the seasons I have found a plethora of streamside distractions to occupy my mind when it inevitably wanders from matters aquatic. I always carry a camera, and it often features heavily during quiet moments. Searching out wee beasties to photograph is great fun, and a lovely way to learn about river ecology. Last year I even took up the harmonica, and found that riversides were an ideal place to practice, being as they often are in the middle of nowhere. There’s nothing like the sense of freedom to wail provided by tall trees, waving grasses and no people.

One of the best things about fishing is the quiet moments, where sitting beside a gurgling run one has the space to really breathe. I often spend an hour or more de-robed of my fishing gear just sitting and staring into the middle distance (that almost makes it sound like I’m naked, which is not true, at least physically). Perhaps it says more about me that it does about fishing or rivers, but whatever the case I do love the way that angling gives you time to find space, both in body and in mind.

I also find that my perfected middle-distance stare helps me to listen to the sounds around me in a more focussed way than if I’m actually trying to fish. I think that no-one should be allowed to pass judgment on fishing as being boring or pointless unless they’ve spent a sunny May afternoon by the side of a tree-clad riverbank, occasionally glancing around, but mostly just listening to the chorus of life. Perhaps the sight of a rising hatch, spurring on trout to the surface, should compliment such a romantic scene. Only then, when your eyes are full of the colour of the bluebell carpet under the trees, and your nose sings with the smell of wild onion, only then do I think one should be able to pronounce fishing as pointless. If you do wish to do so, you have my blessing, for perhaps I am indeed mad. But I do know of one man in possession of a hell of a lot more intelligence than I who seems to have understood something of what I’m trying to say (or perhaps it’s the other way around)..

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. A. Einstein

Despite this upwelling of sentiment for the glory of the riverbank, we are coming close to the crux of the post. While I have come to love the being part of fishing a beautiful river, I realise more and more that in fact what I’ve been is little more than a city interloper, full of excitement at pastures new, and perhaps also a little full of myself. I do sometimes wonder if my dream of the river is a false and silly dream borne of crowded streets and blaring car horns. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. I suppose a dream is what you make of it, and if it gets you through the day, the month or the year, weaving a little line of hope, that’s as much as you can wish for. What I can say is that all this this ho-hum, romantic posturing has spurned me on in recent weeks to engage a bit more with my surroundings when I’m out and about, and get past all the stargazing. And it starts with the trees.

Despite being an admirer of fine trees, I’m as ingnorant as nuts about what distinguishes an oak from a tree of heaven. It’s finally got to me, and I’m turning over a new leaf. My first step on the road to horticultural heaven has been to buy a wee pocket book about the most common trees in the UK. I thumbed through a load of big impressive tomes before deciding on this little gem, and for less than a fiver I’m very pleased. It’s easily small enough to take along on trips to the river and glen, and seems reasonably comprehensive if not exhaustive. Perfect for a beginner.

I’ve resolved to learn at least one tree every time I’m out. Any more than that and I know I’ll forget. With my trusty camera around my neck to make records, I’m starting out on the dusty road to knowledge. I reckon it’ll make a nice wee side-chain of posts here on Tamanawis. I suppose my secret hope is that any readers out there with a similar thirst for natural knowledge might learn along with me as I make posts and pages about what I learn.

So, there is a new section to the site, called The Trees. It’s not directly part of the blog, but is rather a fixed set of pages more like a normal website. Each time I update it I’ll give a shout from here on the blog for any readers coming through Google Reader and the like. There is a permanant link to The Trees page up in the navigation bar visible on every single post and page on Tamanawis. Find it near the top of the page, just below the banner. There are already two entries, alder and beech. What can I say? Exciting stuff.

It might just be yet another distraction from fishing, but I’m actually rather enjoying my new quest for treedom. Out and about, fishing or otherwise, I’m finding a whole new world of fun as I speculate and marvel at the wonderful world of trees. One might almost say that a leaf has been turned. And at the second telling of that feeble joke in one post, it’s over and out.

It turned out that he was the newly appointed Commander in Chief of the Braided Loops Anonymous charity. This is a little known organisation that works to rehabilitate anglers unfortunate enough to have been conned by clever marketing into using braided loops on the ends of their fly lines. He was remarkably adamant about the evil of braided loops, and I could see where he was coming from.

People spend gazillions of pounds/dollars/euros on fly lines. Some of those Scientific Anglers jobs cost more than most of my fly rods. These modern fly lines are a marvel of engineering. Carefully chosen plastic composites are sheathed over intricately woven braid, and the whole thing given a precise and painstakingly researched profile. There are gazillions of profiles of course, each suited to a different condition, a certain size of fly, a nymph or a dry, night time or day time. The profiles taper with nuclear accuracy, honed from the wide diameter of the head, down through the transitional taper to the delicate little section right at the tip. It’s enough to cause my head to spin.

So there they are, ranks of beautifully constructed fly lines, many of them costing considerably more than a fine 17 year old single malt. They’re carefully attached to similarly expensive brightly-coloured backing, presumably made from Madonna’s old tights, and wound onto similarly expensive reels peddled by certain bling merchants as important for catching fish. And the pièce de résistance?  Glue a 50 pence hunk of plastic on the end.

It’s like a sous-chef taking all day to prepare a delicately flavoured bolognaise sauce, using only the freshest ripe tomatoes, the most aromatic basil and the most mature steak, and then lobbing in half a bottle of ketchup. It’s just not cricket.

So, what’s a better solution?

This picture has nothing to do with this post. But tell me, when was a photo of a guy wearing a kilt sporting a head digitally-substituted with a bunch of flowers not a good thing?

Well the old Wise-Man of Pitlochry uses a simple Borger knot, tying his leader straight onto the end of the fly line. This inevitably causes a slight hump from the wraps of the knot, but it’s a hell of a lot less intrusive than those braided loops.

In an earlier post I waxed lyrical about the method of gluing a leader into the end of the fly line. This is still my preferred method, and the one that unquestionably gives the smoothest transition between fly line and leader, and ultimately the smoothest turnover.

The only downside is the slight hinging effect that happens between the stiff end of the leader butt and the limp fly line. I’ve found that over the course of a few months, particularly when you’re fishing a lot, a bit of a crack can sometimes develop in the fly line at this hinge.

Personally, I can’t be bothered with trying to re-glue a hingey fly line to leader connection when I’m out on the river. Nowadays I therefore tend to adopt the Wise-Man’s approach, and use a knot.

And here we come to the crux of this ramble. Whilst browsing around a year or two ago I came across a groovy nail knot tool that makes it really easy to tie a secure connection between leader and fly line. The Wise-Man disapproved of course, saying that any angler worth his salt should be able to tie knots without a tool. Again, I can see his point, but I like my damn tool. It’s small, cute and does the job very nicely. I’ve tried doing nail knots with no tools, and while it is perfectly possible, this wee tool lets me do it in a fraction of the time. Most importantly however, I feel more inclined to trust the final knots.

“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.

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.

Here are some statistics for you. In four trips for grayling I have:

spent 20 hours chucking bombs into icy rivers
struck 316 times at false takes from snags
spent 5 hours thawing out frozen feet
lost 11 flies
lost 4 complete leader setups
broken the tip of 1 rod (a particularly proud moment)
lost my mind
and… caught no fish

Not since the earliest days of my fishing career have I blanked so impressively: this was truly spectacular failure. I should add that I swore on several occasions, most notably when coming incredibly near to falling in (twice). This is clearly bad form, and generally leads to further bad luck. In case this all sounds a little, um, negative, I did HOOK one fish on the second trip. Actually, it was a damn big fish, probably somewhere north of 2.5lb. Of course it came off. It would almost have been a shame to have ruined a perfectly good bit of blanking with a lunker.

With this kind of success rate, I’m seriously considering a career change to martian exploration. It certainly makes you realise that no amount of obsessing over casting, fly tying or other peripheral matters will make you catch fish if they’re not there. Finding grayling in winter can be soul-destroyingly difficult. Despite this, I think that in general if you get your flies to the fish, they’ll usually take. But something about these trips just felt wrong. I never really felt near a fish.

The dreaded question does inevitably creep up at a time like this: what the HELL is the point?

Well, if I had an answer to that then maybe I’d be rich. More likely I’d have taken up cross-stiching. I think that basically, I don’t like failing. I’m perfectly happy to accept that I’m shit at something, but that doesn’t stop me having a pretty long go at it (my PhD studies are a case in point). For the moment, grayling fishing has got the better of me. It’s time to give it a rest, at least until my toes look a little less blue. There is actually a trip in the works to a secret river in a couple of weeks. It’s supposed to have loads of grayling. If I ever DO catch one, I’m going to kiss it and say thanks for taking pity on a blank-firing angler.

In the interest of fairness, I should further point out that my (again, more experienced ) pal did actually catch a grayling on one of the trips. This was, it should be even FURTHER pointed out, only after my brother and I painstakingly woke him up with 39 drifts right over his head. Talk about being a gillie.

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.

The weather has been unseasonably warm, but it seems the fish just don’t look out for sunglasses weather when it comes time to think about getting it on. Despite all things it has really begun to feel like the clouds of another season are beginning to be blown away. It’s a funny feeling really, because while I feel sad to know the season will soon pass, I also know that there have been some great moments that can only ripen in the memory. All that is needed is a winter break to focus the mind anew and bring the excitement of a fresh spring.

Ealier in September we took a wee jaunt up to Perthshire to fish a couple of rivers for a weekend. It coincided with a family celebration (no coincidence) so of course fishing had to be a major feature. The first afternoon was hot and bright, and we struggled away on a lovely little stream full of pocket water and banked by old Scots woodland. A couple of small trout provided minor breaks in the blanking, but this was perhaps a day for enjoying some of the other distractions of a highland stream.

The next day we headed off to a much larger river, and managed to time things pretty well. Soon after arriving some trout started to feed on a small hatch of late olives. We took a few pretty fish to the usual patterns, DHE and a little dun creation of mine that’s been doing quite well this season. A little voice in my head suggested that this might have been the last worthwhile rise of the season. Little voices are often right.

We got down for around 8pm, and I tackled up a little nymph to fish through the pockets of water. It was quite difficult fishing, with plenty of current tongues to drag your line around. I soon found a cracking looking spot in front of a nicely angled boulder which slowed the river current a little. It was one of those times where you absolutely know there is a fish lying there, even though you can’t see him.

It took a bit of inventive casting/chucking of the nymph, but eventually I got a really nice drift. It was really difficult to see the leader, so I wasn’t sure how I was going to detect a take. Then something wierd happened, a bit like an experience had a few months back on a similar urban river. The feeling struck, and I struck, and the fish stuck. Worth practising this nymphing lark.

Now a good part of this river is very close to Edinburgh airport, and you certainly know about it fishing in the evenings. I know Alistair has plenty to say about urban fly fishing, but this was hardcore! Planes, planes everywhere, every two minutes rushing a couple hundred feet over our heads. At first it was exciting. Then it was a little tedious. Then it began to get downright annoying. We do suffer for our sport

It was getting pretty late, so we found a nice run and tackled up some big scary flies, hoping for a passing sea trout. After a good while of fruitless casting, I opted rather bizzarly to do some extreme roll casting practice. Not a pretty sight, especially when there’s a size 8 longshank muddler minnow on the end of the cast.

Actually this photo isn’t me, but my pal had better loops than me tonight

Once the water was almost completely churned up by the beautiful presentation I was getting, the fly was left dangling in the current whilst we had a natter about something or other. Probably the damn aeroplanes. Out of nowhere the line tightened sharply, and I was into a fish. For just a split second I thought maybe, maybe it’s a sea trout. But it turned out to be a feisty brownie of a nice 3/4lb. Really good for this bit of river. We decided I’d reached a new nirvana of fishing, where I hook fish without even meaning to.

In case you’re wondering, he was bigger than he looks here.

It was now getting late, and nothing more was showing so it was on with the headtorches and back home. The moon made a lovely view as it rose upriver.

A pal of mine mentioned to me a while back that during the hot summer months he’d had most success on his local rivers very early in the morning. At such times the water temperature is lowest, and coupled with a steadily increasing air temperature as the sun comes up this may lead to good fly activity. I used to fish for tench very early in the morning, but what about trout?

We arrived expectantly awaiting a kettle of feeding fish, but of course we found a rather different river. Just the occasional gloop broke the smooth surfaces of the glides, and the bubbling runs busily chatted away to each other, the trout eavesdropping somewhere else.

I tried casting to a couple fish I saw rise, but after cycling from a DHE to a Shipman’s it looked rather like the fish couldn’t really be bothered. So we both switched to nymphs, vague haresy jobbies with black or gold noggins. I set things up with a little tuft of sheeps wool a couple of feet from the fly, perfectly happy that I was going to disown myself later for this terrible act of heresy. About 500 false strikes later I was ready for a DHS again. A size 18 brought a handful of takes, but it was obvious that things weren’t really happening. I began to wonder whether some rivers are naturally better ‘evening’ or ‘morning’ streams. Perhaps their orientation to the sun (as in directly upstream/downstream) has an effect. Certainly this matters to fishermen..!

This cracker took a size 8 Royal Wulff. At one stage, as the backing knot wizzed ever closer, I felt a pang of doubt over my abilities as an angler.

Further upstream I caught a couple of pretty trout to the DHE, fished with almost only the leader on the water. The more we fish here the more we realise this is the way. Charles Jardine had an article in FF&FT a couple of months ago about this. It’s got to be the best way to fish fast pockety water.

We had breakfast at about 1pm. Madcap dedication I say, considering we hadn’t really caught very well. But it was a lovely morning, a wee breeze and some flittering clouds adding to the yellow sunshine. A few sedges milled around landing on us and generally looking sleepy.

This chap caught my eye with his tigery patterns. John Goddard tells me he’s a brown silverhorn sedge, and is very common on streamy rivers.

Afternoon and nap time. Nothing like a kip on the river bank, especially after a couple of hours sleep the night before followed by 7 hours straight fishing.

About 4pm we stirred and thought about heading back to town for our evening arrangements. Wondering down the river we noticed that the breeze had strengthened and there were rain clouds on the horizon. What followed was totally unexpected.

A hatch. A big hatch. Of blue-winged olives.

It was fantastic to see little explosions in the riffles as trout broke the surface. Careful weighing up of the maths and we decided that the following formula had been applied by the trout:

Big BWO hatch + howling gale = loadsa flies on the water

We furthered this with:

Loadsa flies on the water + loadsa trout = a cracking rise

Which turned out to be spot on. Only it took me a short lifetime to realise exactly what was happening. First I managed to go through about 7 fly changes, from red-tags to bibios to double badgers, with thoughts of a terrestrial fall. The fish, however, were definitely experiencing some tunnel vision.

Finally I began to wise up and put on my never-fail CDC F-fly in a size 16, and started hooking fish. It was odd, it almost seemed like they were so clued into the duns that even the standard emergers were being ignored. I’m sure this had something to do with the strong wind, and slightly inclement conditions. This meant that the duns were really struggling to get airborne, so that many more ended up on the water than usual. Fascinating stuff I thought, and very exciting to be a part of. Next time I’ll try not to be caught so unawares. I suppose you don’t expect such good surface activity in the middle of the dog days.

As my brother pointed out, our takes-to-hookups-to-landings ratio was totally horrendous. I had so many fish splash at the fly, with my bullet-strikes failing to connect. I hooked quite a few despite this, but lost all before ‘proper’ release was possible. I was a little frustrated by this, especially as we had to leave while BWOs were still stumbling around on the water. But in hindsight, it was just great to be in a proper hatch again, and casting to rising fish with at least a vague idea of where the fly was.

It was amazing to witness how a really difficult fishing situation can suddenly become almost ‘easy’. A writer called Bob Wyatt (the guy whose fly patterns I usually use) wrote an article about this very thing in last months FF&FT, and to me it just makes more and more sense the longer I’m a fly fisherman. If there’s food, there’re fish. If there’s no food, use a wooly bugger.

I managed to fish three days in a row this weekend, down on my favourite bit of water. We spread things out so no water was fished more than once. Turned out to be a fascinating run of fishing. I think it highlighted some important things to me, which I may have ‘known’ already but are best learnt with real experience.

First night it was hot, with a little breeze to start with. We headed to a bit of river we haven’t fished before, but were dissapointed to find it was poor fly water. Actually it was more reminiscent of a narrow loch, the surface rippled in the wind. Not the nice streamy pocket water we usually fish. The water temperature was just about right for simmering bulgar wheat, so we walked and walked in search of riffly water. I felt smug that my decision to wet-wade was not going to be regretted.

Eventually came to a cracking pool, with dozens of channels between streamer weed and rocks. I waited whilst the brother fished the nice bits. As he was flicking the fly line out of the rod tip, the fly (a standard DHS, superbly tied once again) landed a couple of rod lengths ahead in some slow flowing water. A nice fish slashed at it and a Class A Bullet Strike followed, sending him packing to his bolt hole.

I ambled upstream finding more dead water and some enthusiastic parr feading on floating fag ends and anything else on the surface. It wasn’t until the sun was well gone, maybe 10.15, when I noticed some nice fish moving in a pool just downstream. I crept up and watched. There were mini-submarines in that pool. Big swirling wakes were all I saw of the fish as they supped down sedges and BWO spinners. One fish was well over 2lb judging by the water displacement, the other at least 2lb. Casting to them was just about impossible due to wading issues and sh!te casting ability on my part. So I accepted as much and enjoyed the knowledge that I’d found some whoppers.

These photos are of a BWO male spinner. As far as I know they don’t feature much in an evening rise, as it’s the females that lay eggs and die on the water. I think sherry spinners are much more vividly orange as well.

Next day and some serious fly tying took up a good bit of the day. I think I’ve cracked those DHEs. Seem to turn out well every time now. I tied a few with a bit of fluff to suggest a shuck. Not sure if that makes sod-all difference but I felt slightly intelligent doing so.

The weather was a little more cloudy this evening, and very humid. We were fishing at the bottom end of our more usual beat, again an area we haven’t fished much. A couple fish rose lazily, and I felt chuffed to catch a nice one of around 10oz to the DHE above. The brother had a few throughout the evening, to the DHS.

Something we both noticed was that drag was even more of an issue than normal, and it’s normally difficult to control. We reckoned the low water was making things worse, as the surface of the pools and flats we fished was always very ‘swirly’ if you catch my drift. Of course all rivers are swirly, but this was noticibly difficult. I thought about things for a very long time and came up with an amazing formula:

warm water + crap casting + bad drag = difficult

Next night I opted for a longer leader than usual, probably around 15′, with oodles of limp tippet (if you know what I mean). This definitely helped the drag issues (of course), but my hyper-crap casting made controlling where the fly went interesting. This was worst when casting only a couple of feet of fly line, fishing pocket water at close range.

Interestingly I caught a grayling, which seem quite rare where I fish. I see Ali had a similar experience the other night. Total fluke on my part, I was just beginning to drag the size 12 DHS across the water to cast again. Late on the fish really started to show, taking some of the BWO spinners that had returned. Definitely some caenis feeding going on as well. And some sedge feeding fish, so all in all quite good given the tepid water.

So fishing three days in a row at this time of year taught me a lot. The importance of timing of course. At no stage was it really worth fishing before 9pm. Peak of any rising was 10-11pm. Spinner feeding fish are a damned arse to cast to when you’re fishing a long leader and can’t see a thing. Caenis feeding fish take the piss. Give me a sedge feeder any day, please. At least until my casting gets better (it will I hope).

And each night it was quite different. First night some rises, very late on. Second night not much, despite apparently better conditions. Third night the best by a mile, as there were more flies on the water. Just shows how much you miss out on by fishing only once a week. Solution: fish every day.