A fish on a dry at Bristol Barrows
It’s strange it feels ( like all things these days) that a season screams by in a blur of ocassional sunny days interspersed with grey and wet or windy weather, but in truth, looking back over the happenings from Mid March to seasons end here in October it seems like ages ago.
In truth I probably fished a bit less this season for various reasons, especially evenings, seemed less regular than usual. It had one advantage in that if you fish a lot of evenings in “High Summer” you suffer a lot of blanks ( in my experience) but not had too many this year. Having said that I was not really catching anything sizeable in my river outings, though still water was a bit better. Another hallmark it seems of this season was the lack of opportunities for some dry fly fishing. Dry fly is by far and away my favourite as for one thing you can cast it out and leave it ( on stillwater anyway) so I can fish longer and in less discomfort with the old arthritis. However I don’t these days just fish dry fly because that’s how I want to fish, I do tend to stop and watch whats happening before commiting myself. Yeah, I might have tied on a dry when tackling up but thats as much just to give me something to secure the line back to my rod as anything, get away from the car, get on the bank and assess the situation and judge from there.
Best fish of the afternoon, and best Brown of my whole season to be frank. Was pleased with this one, on the orange ribbed bug.
I don’t think I really seen a proper rise this year until well into summer and had my first fish on a dry ( followed by three more) at Bristol Barrows while down south on a work course. But thats getting ahead of myself a wee bit, early on this season I decided I was going to try fish more of the Carron than I usually expose myself to. I took a bit of a recon up river early season This came in useful for an outing later in the season when I ventured out covering a lot of water but catching almost all tiddlers. It wasn’t until late on in the season I had my best fish down at the heavily fished Larbert end though both were good Trout.
Stonefly Nymph close up
One of my most enjoyable outings this season was on the wee burn, again mostly wee fish, you expect this, but there was one surprise of a good sized fish I would have been happy with on the River. Was a great day to be out. I also managed to get a few good photos, something I have been working on this year with the website, in raising the standard of imagery from my fishing outings. I didn’t have much in the way of videos to show this year, I did have the cameras along with me at times- you will understand it’s a lot of gear to lug around but when I did use them I never ended up with much worth showing. This was the best of them.
The season though had a fair few Stillwater outings, though mostly at my club waters, Pendreich ( which fished quite well in my opinion this year ) and Loch Coulter, which wasn’t bad either. I had a couple of guests out with me on Coulter, friend Radek and my Son ( fathers day). Radek borrowed my rod to get a go with it and proceeded to empty the lake! On the outing with my laddie I managed a couple of fish he sadly remained fishless again!
One of my favourite shots for the summer season taken late in the day at Morton Fishery
I always like to try get out somewhere new and this year I made it along to Morton near West Calder. I had a nice evening there though it was quite warm and still and the fishing was difficult, but did manage one fish which put up a hell of a fight. Did take one of my most pleasing photos of the year there though.
If you follow my facebook page ( and why wouldn’t you?) you will know its close to having 500 followers. To help it along the way I am giving away a fly box with flies tied by my good self. I was originally planning on offering one fly for every 10 likes up to 500 and a further fly for each ten over, up to the capacity of the box which is around 70 odd flies. While it got a bit of a bump up at the start this seems to have stalled and I have yet to hit the 500 page likes which is kind of disappointing.
However the fly tying continues and you will see below that the flies in the box has increased somewhat, and it should not be too long before it is full. if you fancy a chance at winning them make sure you like and share the page and an extra chance is offered to anyone on the subscription list of the site here- you will find the link on the home page. Don’t worry you won’t get spammed, you only get a email when I complete a post on the site, and it’s not shared with any outside organisation.
The prize flybox is filling up- it now has 61 flies in.
Tight lines.
