friday night

 

tonight I spent some time on a lovely stream, the perfect remedy after another

  busy week at work 

 

a nice evening

 

 

small but perfect

 





 

cardamine

 

 

caltha

 

 

one on the nymph

 

 

looks great but still to find a riser in this pool so far this season

   

 

a swarm

 

 

 

First evening on a burn/ and return to the highlands

Last night i fancied wetting a line, my first evening session this year . It was the weather that spurred me on, it was one of these rare muggy days infact the imediate area was on amber alert for a thunderstorm accompanied with heavy downpours but it never came to anything.

The main river was still fining down from saturdays downpour so i headed up a little burn , a tributary of a tributary, it was looking great. i picked up half a dozen trout all on  dirty pollies , before calling it a night just after 9pm.
 

 Today i had  another trip to the same river i fished last Tuesday. The water was lower than when i last fished it and it was dour. throughout the day i picked up the odd fish mainly to dries but it still is a shadow of it's potential.

The fishing was that poor the I was ready to go and try a tributary but i just had to fish "that" pool.
To my surprise when i got to the pool i saw a riser , then i saw one nearer me in the tail , and it looked a good fish when i saw the back and fins caress the surface , unlike anything else today he was going regularly. replacing the duo for  a single size 12 biot klink with shaking hands i double checked my knot my heart was pumping i could even hear the beat . I tried to calm down , and hoped my  nervous vice like grip around the cork would relax , and would allow for a decent executed cast with accepatable touchdown. my first cast landed short , but the second was spot on!

     A fine trout , ive a sneaking feeling though ive seen this fellae before. It had been a eventful trip, which got me thinking . Why do we go fishing, or why must we go fishing  , i think we crave that fix, the chemical cocktail of reactions in our bodies which go on when theres triumph disapointment  the rush of adrenalins,  and perhaps endorphins? its a theory anyway.

a loch saves the day

After studying the weather forecast for various destinations Col and I decided to head to one of our favourite highland rivers on Saturday, there was the chance of rain in the afternoon but nothing to serious. We set off a wee bit earlier than normal to give ourselves time to fish a loch which is also covered on the same permit, and then the plan was to fish the river in the afternoon. Whilst picking up our permits we stocked up on supplies for the day, a couple of steak bridies each and some irn bru, sorted! The first bridies didn't make it out of the shop car park, they were tasty enough, but could have been doing with a bit more steak we thought, a six out of ten!

a burn near the loch

 





 On to the loch I set up with a team of three wets and Col fished a dirty polly dry. An hour or so later I had had a couple of offers to the wets but wasn't that encouraged, then in a section of the loch with the wind on our backs Col spotted some risers a fair bit out and soon lost a fish on the dry before bringing one to hand.

 

I changed over to the dry too and landed a trout before we left for the river.

 

 



 The river was very low and crystal clear,  things started of well enough with Col taking a small fish from the first run. The optimism didn't last though as we fished through some usually productive water only turning a couple of trout on the way.

 

  Apart from the lack of trout there was also three other anglers  following us upstream which was a bit un relaxing to be honest so we decided to cut our losses and head back to the loch.

 

viola

 

 

After the long walk back to the car and the much needed second bridie of the day we were back on the loch in the late afternoon, Col wasted no time getting in on the action, the trout were taking a liking to his dirty polly, the thing to do was cast it out and leave it for a minute, if no takes were forthcoming static, retrieve it back when often the trout would hit it.

 

 

the trout were in taking mood and it made for a fun afternoon after the hard slog on the river

 

 

Col showing off with two at once!

 

 

 

so our day didn't go quite according to plan with the river being out of sorts , but it was good to have the loch up our sleeve to save the day.

 





 









Delayed spring in the highlands

Today i decided to sample one of our favourite highland streams , just to see if it had woken up yet as this elongated spring continues. i was relieved the water was fishable though it was carrying a little more water than usual , but it was still crystal clear, though very cold compared to our lowland waters . Some plant life in the wood was also slow to get going the wood anemones had still to fully open, and in abundance were the pale yellow primroses, one of our first spring flowers and quite abundant in this area.

primula vulgaris

The trees though were much the same as ours back home some were bare some budding others starting to bare the odd leave .

in the wood

  some other flowers were also keeping pace with the lowlands.

cuckoo flower

early forget me not

The fishing though was slow and the familiar downstream wind was present,  although in the pool i started on it looked promising as i turned a fish in the first pool. After that though it just wasn't happening despite one or two upwings hatching, the water felt dead. I came to a big slow pool and found a riser, he took my biot klink, first cast and i took a further 3 of similar size in that area.

it was good to get the blank out the way, but after those fish, it went back to its dour state, only rising another fish in a massive paceless pool. Eventually i came to this pool, the last pool i intended to fish.

Its a pool that's been fairly kind to me in the past and today it surrendered one of its occupants. He took the brown wire nymph.

This is the sort of fish i was searching for today, a real toothy highland brute . I think i'll leave it a couple of weeks before i return, it   really needs to warm up a bit yet which seems crazy considering we are into mid May . I crave the evenings fishing stimulators but that seems a long way away yet. 

down the local this weekend

With no car this weekend Col and I spent Saturday afternoon on my local river. We had a strong downstream wind to contend with and not a lot of fly on the water to begin with, so we walked upstream in search of some risers taking in some of the wild flowers along the way.

red campion

dead nettle Lamium purpureum

   

after an hour or so the hatch seemed to get underway proper and we started to pick up trout here and there,



 olive uprights were on the menu today with the odd  brook dun too, in some pools they were coming down in there droves.





 the shucked cdc was working its magic taking the lions share of the fish

Col spotted a what he described as a wolf of a trout on the near bank of a particularly ugly pool next to a scrap yard. Once in position the shuck cdc was drifted over him and the wolf was on!

he was a fine two pounder

pentaglottis sempervirens

a few more  followed to end a good day.....



.....and this afternoon I was back for more! although the hatch wasn't as good as yesterday a  few nice trout  fell mainly to the shucked cdc. All in all not a bad weekend and right on my door step.

Ransoms wood garlic

Turn of the stone clingers

Got down the river for 1pm. it was a lovely day in the morning , i didn't even bother with the jacket, but payed for it, as i sat for over an hour and a half before wetting a line once the flies finally started hatching. Not much baetis species in evidence , today the stone clinger species were in dominance, brook duns and the first of the olive uprights hatched the trout though don't seem to have fully switch on to them yet , but they will , it's my favourite hatch of the  season , really gets the fish gorging . Overall  a strange day seemed to get colder as the day wore on and the rain came on at 4pm making fishing a bit uncomfortable and cold (no jacket) , the old Scots phrase "don't shed a cloot 'til Mays oot" is very fitting.
 a few pics.

pink purslane

More woodland colours and fish

I somehow  managed another day fishing today (i think i may have achieved extra brownie points?) so decided on the lower stretches of my local river. The fishing was pretty good when i arrived at 1pm so it was just a case of working my way up the river picking of risers  , all were taken on what have become my industrious spring workers,  the biot klink and shucked cdc.


  I pulled out of two better fish on my way upstream, but Ive noted there position for the future,a few modest trout though stuck.

Plenty more flowers in the wood today, the forest floor in some parts is going to be a sea of bluebells in the next few weeks, it will be a stunning sight .

The marsh marigolds are almost blinding on the fringes of the stream.

Wood sorrel (oxalis)  apparently rich in vitamin c , next time I'm there i think I'll try some mmmmm.....

Its not just the flowers putting on a show, An unravelling fern (bracken i think).

 Suburbia creeps in.

And a nice fish to finish a nice  day .