Evening on the Green burn

Went up to a fertile local burn this evening. I tied some spinners prior to this visit having seen them (olive upright spinners) in abundance further down on the river last night whilst walking the dog.

 hook: sprite model perfect 14
 tail: coq de leon
abdomen: mahogany turkey biots
 wing: light grey poly yarn
 thorax: rust dubbing






 

The river was low and fairly clear with a green tinge. we haven't had any rain for a fortnight now and its showing on all the local rivers , they could do with a freshen up and a bit more flow.   

As i walked down its banks there was no fly to be seen on the water, and there fore no trout rising .

Water Avens

Then while setting up a fish rose tight to the foot of a tree trunk in the tail of a pool. so once set up i put on a size 12 klink , but didn't want to know, i then decided to size up to a size 10 dirty polly and try and get this stubborn fish to rise, half a dozen casts or so later nothing, i was just about to put that disturbance down to something else then up he came . He was a fine fish for a burn  too.

 First fish out the way i had steady sport taking fish not in all pools but most. Not quite the perfect spinner fall but the newly tied patterns took a few.

The woolly bugger also came in useful in a few pools , although the majority were caught on a dry. it had been a nice evening fishing , even though there was no true evening rise just the odd sporadic fish to go for.

Some you win some you Lose

Today i fished a local I've recently acquired a permit for, its opened up lots of new water so today i went to sample it. Walking it banks i was pleased to finally see the hawthorns flies hatching , there was hundreds of them on the bank side vegetation, approximately a month late..

bibio marci

first i fished some featureless flats , a few up wings were hatching so i used my trusty shucked CDC ,rose a few fish but missed them, eventually though one stuck and it proved to be a good fish , a few hairy moments when i ploughed into some snags , but eventually i took it to hand , just a couple of ounces under 2lb.

I was fairly chuffed to get off the mark especially with such a nice trout. continuing upstream i landed some more trout averaging around the pound, then i spotted what was clearly a better fish in a prime spot. Best i could do though was prick him, i held my head in my hands for a while. The next pool had two trout rising, eventually i hooked the lower one on a brown biot klink and it was a good one . i just about had it beat then it nutmegged me (ran between my legs ) went round my leg and broke off, things just were not going well. I got his wee pal though who was just over the pound. A couple of pools up again . Two fish rising , the lower one intermittently, but I'm glad i stuck it out with him as he was a belter. Took me ages to tame this beast, applying side strain trying to prevent it finding any  sunken branches etc lots of hairy moments as my tight tippet stroked a bankside twig on my near bank this time i kept my legs firmly closed and On my third attempt i finally managed to slip the net under him. I was delighted. What a fish!

3lb 2oz

 I needed a rest after that i sat for 5 minutes just to take in the occasion.

once on my way again , i caught a few more fish , then i spotted another better fish feeding , i chose to ignore the smaller fish rising in my near side , he was feeding well taking everything, and the first cast he walloped my CDC , and fought well, nothing like the fish above but as he hit the shallows he shot off upstream ripping line off. but eventually he was netted. Looks like he had had a tussle with either a mink or a otter with a section of his ample tail missing and a nasty wound on his belly.

    A couple more around the pound and a quarter mark followed, it had been a great wee session, a few better fish lost yet some crackers landed.

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