Surfs up!

Yesterday afternoon we made a late decision to try out an East Lothian beach for flounders , this beach has the added pull of throwing up the occasional turbot, some big ones too but we have still to encounter a decent sized one. We arrived about an hour before low tide and fished the first hour down, the conditions looked rough  but i don't think they were as bad as it looked.  The surfers were out in force enjoying themselves and we even found scaling down to 2oz leads was managing to roll to our liking on the bottom. . I lost a flounder right at the edge, it then went quiet until the tide turned when Brian was the first to take a fish , a wee fellae but nice to see .

He then took the next again .

Whilst returning flounder no.2 , Brian walked into my lines , I thought it was him  but it was infact a take as when he walked away the rod was still nodding , and i landed my first of the day .

 

 It wasn't busy sport but I had another and Brian had  another Brace, one of them a good sized fish.

Brian decided he'd had enough, frustratingly i had a lot of bites not coming to anything , i then had a bite on my right hand rod , which had a small flounder , while i did that my other rod rattled , which brian picked up and reeled in   to find a double shot of flounder. The gully i was fishing seeemed to have come to life, but darkness was almost upon us and bellies were rumbling .

Not the busiest of flounder sesssions , but not bad either. looking forward to giving it another go and with a bit of luck perhaps a turbot will grace our hooks?

drawing to a close

With the season drawing to a close tomorrow I spent a final afternoon on my favourite local burn, some pictures.

A Tumble in the Jungle

Decided on one last trip to a local river yesterday. I hadn't fished it since late May, mainly because I find getting from pool to pool a real task when the undergrowth gets going also take in consideration the damage inflicted on waders with brambles and partly also because it's slow flat pools are perhaps more suited to early to mid season dry fly tactics.

My fears were justified , getting from pool to pool was a real task in the deep areas where you had to leave the river, I basically had to grasp a bunch of nettles and haul my self out the water and up the banking , my hands are still stinging. On another occasion I was trying to get past a junk yard stretch of the river which is full of Japanese knot weed forcing my way through I took a tumble down the banking , luckily my reaction was to let go off the rod at the top of the brae and also I stopped short of the river.

The fishing though was fantastic!Barely a rising trout to be seen all day , but in any piece of water with any defined current ,  even wee short shallow runs in the tails of pools , fish were to be had mainly to a wire nymph but a few took the dry.

A shallow dub  behind a  bush  which held  fish

 A few good fish were willing to take too , the best I landed was 1 3/4lb which put up a great fight , also   had good number in and just over the pound mark , and a few lost that may  have been bigger fish?

Even the minnows were hungry

1lb 12oz

the rivers were up this morning and with exceptionally heavy rain forecast for tonight , I've a sneaking suspicion that's going to be the last outing of the 2013 trout season, still there's plenty of other types of fish to go for during the winter season. Looking forward to it already.

A day on the Burns

Felt like a cast with the wee rod today so decided on a burn i had yet to wet a line on this season, known locally as the yellow burn . Its just a short stroll from the grayling burn so i intended  to give that some attention at some point too.

The  water was low the fish incredibly spooky and it was difficult to get close to any fish without emptying the pool of scared trout. The broken water was the best bet , otherwise it was a case of doing the best i could with a long leader on the flat flow- less pools but the odds were definitely in the trouts favour.
 

A yellow trout from the yellow burn

  Here and there a few little trout were caught .

 After a few hours on this burn i headed for the grayling burn. On arrival  it appeared low and coloured and apart from a few dropped fish on the first few pools , i felt it wasn't going to produce , so I decided to head downstream to where the main tributary joins it and fish above a couple of large pools. 

Finding these pools to access from the path proved difficult but i finally found the river after clambering my way through some dense undergrowth . The water looked great , but it was really quite dour, it came as no surprise though as this stretch does have a reputation as being poor.

I fished away and it came as a bit of a shock when i finally hooked into a fish.

It continued being really quite poor until suddenly the fishing picked up. In one particular pool i picked up around five  browns  , maybe grouping up for spawning?

The last pool of the day produced the best fish .

last pool

It had been a tough days fishing , but what great weather we are still experiencing, long may it continue.

Hangover cure

I hadn't really gave it much thought where I would be fishing this weekend, added to that I wasn't feeling particularly lively yesterday morning with a bit of a hangover to be honest. When I eventually got myself going I decided that somewhere local would suit fine so in the end I had a look at the grayling burn.

It was a fine afternoon, perhaps not for fishing with the bright sunshine, but days like these are numbered now so it was nice to fish in short sleeves again before the cooler temperatures kick in. The pool I start of on nearly always produces a trout and today was no different when an acrobatic pounder managed to shed the dirty polly from its jaws.  I continued on my way upstream fishing some normally productive pools without a touch, with very little fly life on the water there wasn't a riser to be seen, then in the head of a shaded pool the dirty polly shot under and I struck into to a weighty trout which had taken the glister nymph.

I never got another touch after that but was contented taking in the early autumn  colours.

hawthorn leaves

I fished up to a pool not to far from where the car was parked so at that point decided to up sticks and take a look at another burn not to far away.

Being heavily tree lined this burn offers more shade, and from the off the trout were in taking mood



 a couple of hours passed as I worked my way up a small section of this beautiful wee burn

 it had been a great afternoon and better still my hangover had well and truly gone!

Flatties , falling in , and other bad luck.

I decided to take this week off (apart from Tuesday). Monday i decided to have a go for flounder so tried Portobello beach, got there for low tide , the sea was flat and it turned out to be hard going , just a couple of flounder and a few nibbles i suspect were coalfish.

I mentally marked the features such as gullies and concentrated my baits there when they had fully flooded. It wasn't the most productive flattie session though, but i think that had a lot to do with lack of movement on the baits in the tide.

A gullie etched  in the memory bank for when the tide comes in

Wednesday saw me down my local for the afternoon after i had walked the dog the river looked great , there was plenty fish on the feed too, and the fishing was really productive.

 

Flies with a touch of glister were really effective, in all i must have landed around 50 trout and lost many more, nothing exceptional a few around and just over the pound. Unfortunately i took a tumble in one pool falling forward and filling my waders , and drowning my camera in the process.

Thursday i never really got going till 4pm when i grabbed the gear and went for the pike , the canal was full of floating blanket type weed and every cast came back with some , there was a patch that was clear and i took 3 jacks from it , no pics the camera still drying out.

On Friday i found my camera working again which i was happy about, and i headed down the local again for 2pm .

 On arrival the river appeared busy with quite  a few anglers, so i left them some water to fish  and found a un-fished  quiet stretch. the fishing was much  the same as the Wednesday, but at one pool i hooked into a monster , but unfortunately it threw the nymph , don't know if it was a big brown or a coloured sea trout , must've been between 3-4 lb. Slightly disappointed but on the whole i went home fairly  contented with my lot.

 not long now till the end of the season hopefully get a trip or two in yet?

A borders burn, bridges and brown trout

It would be a great shame if we didn't cast a line on this lovely borders burn all season, and with time rapidly running out as this stream closes at the end of September we took our chance yesterday.

From the car we walked down to where the burn enters the main river where we bumped into a fellow angler setting up his double hander for a crack at the salmon. He didn't seem to fancy our chances too much on the burn as he thought it was now devoid of trout and grayling, a shadow of what it used to be twenty years ago etc etc!. We listened politely before continuing on our way, not in the slightest bit worried about his assessment of the burn as having fished it a couple of times in recent years we knew that it is absolutely stuffed with trout, not sure about the grayling  population  mind you not having encountered any on our previous visits, maybe that's what he meant ?

 From the off it was clear we were in for an action packed day with most pools producing several takes both to the dry and nymph from the small but eager trout.

one of many bridges on this stretch

mint of some sort?

I said to Col early on that a pound trout would be a fine goal for the day, the pounder was proving to be elusive however amongst the numerous wee trout, but late in the afternoon Col shouted from a pool above me and I could see him playing a good fish which cleared the air during battle, the pounder we had been after and a what a handsome trout he was too!

speaking of elusive fish I hooked what felt like a slightly better than average trout  compared what I had been catching up to that point, as I drew the fish closer I could see that it wasn't a trout after all, but a nice wee grayling at last!

its a shame this stream isn't open during  the winter months for the grayling as it would make a nice wintertime venue.