Orkney weekend

Back yesterday from a  long weekend in Orkney visiting my mum, i'm not usually up there so early on in the year but fancied having a go for sea trout in the salt as their season  got underway on Feb 25th. Having read a couple of good articles on the subject it seems as if the spring sea trout will take the fly readily, the difficult part is locating them, and this was ringing in my ears as on Thursday afternoon and on Friday morning  when i drew a blank after trying a few different locations around the island, some of which I've encountered sea trout from before in the autumn months. I could feel my confidence draining, there's a lot of coastline to cover, i wished i had some kind of sea trout detector to find them!

Saturday would effectively be my last real chance to bag myself a sea trout with no fishing for migratory fish on Sundays so there was nothing else for it but to get out there and try again. I decided to try a location i had fished the day before but this time rather than concentrate on the most obvious area went on for a wonder down the coastline a bit. I found a  bay i liked the look of so thought i would give it a try, wading  my way through it after a few casts there was a little resistance which felt different from the usual hang up in the bladderwrack, next cast and my suspicions were confirmed as i hooked a lively wee sea trout which cleared the air on hook up, i was over the moon to finally find a sea trout.

  more nips and pulls every other cast and another sea trout followed before it went quite

 this is when i was unsure what to do next, do i continue to wade forward through the bay to try and find them again? or will that spook the entire shoal? i decided to carefully get out of the water and rest the spot for half an hour and go try another area for a wee while, on my return i was straight into fish again, some coming from within feet of the shoreline on the high tide, great sport for a while with loads of hook ups and takes too before it quietened down again, none were big but great sport.

   

the orange fritz with bead chain eyes was working well

as was the platinum blonde

i decided to drive to another spot further up the coast but on arrival noticed another angler had already beat me to it, never mind, since i was in the area i visited a relative for a chin wag and a much needed coffee and cake,  after that i returned to my original spot in the now falling tide, i had a few more hook ups and one or two of them were of a decent size, but failed to land any of them.

another wee fella from earlier on in the day

late Saturday and Sunday afternoon  i took some pictures around and about the island, weather wise it was great for the time of year. 

the Italian chapel 

   

Italian prisoners of war joined two nissen huts to make the chapel during the second world war

an old tractor going back to nature

footprints

the ring of brodgar

it's sailing days are over

spring tides

leaving at noon on monday i got up super early to squeeze in a couple of hours fishing at first light, i didn't find any sea trout in the little bay this time but lost a small fish in the weed further down the shoreline, unlike the other day there didn't seem to be any more of his pals in the same area, maybe because of the big tide? i'm not sure but i continued to work my way along and a while later had a good fish maybe around the 2lb mark follow the fly right to my feet before taking the fritz, unfortunately the hook didn't hold which was a pity because that would have been the icing on the cake but with no time left i reluctantly had to leave. This weekends been a learning curve with highs and lows, not easy fishing but if i could do it again tomorrow i would right in there, the chance of a big bar of silver is to much to resist.