A brilliantly red spotted wild Brown from the Carron
I decided to hobble off down to the River Carron again yesterday. I wasn’t sure where to head but drove along the rod that follows the North bank and while looking down at one of my favourite wee pools, I seen a rise! A fish!
That made my mind up so I was off across the field down to the river. I could see fish rise all the way down. I had already set up my leader to fish a nymph under an dry but before casting a line I already felt this wasn’t necessary. But I gave it a wee throw across the lower end of the pool in the hope the fish weren’t too spooky. The water was quite clear, not gin clear but enough to see the bottom under say a couple of feet of water. Nothing took my flies so I changed set up to a single dry fly, to match what the flies coming off the water seemed to be. There were wee midges but what I noted was there were fairly large very pale “Mayfly” type duns coming off the water and when I was noticing them , so were the fish. The rise would start as they appeared and stop either as the sun broke through the clouds, or the flies appeared to stop hatching off. It was definitely these big things they were after as I was regularly sitting down and just watching and more than once I spotted a fly stuck in the surface or failing to get clear quickly enough, only to be snatched by a trout. I suspected most of these rises were from smaller fish but you never know until you have one on the line. After about 40 minutes I was getting a little frustrated as by now I had been through 6 or 7 flies and not had so much as a look. I then had the brainwave to try a pattern much favoured by my mate John, his Greenwells Glory Variant. A CDC hackle on a Greenwells Glory body and tail. I had a size 12 on which looked close tot he size of the emerging flies. First cast, and there was a very visible flash of gold under the surface, and I was into my first Carron fish of the season!. It wasn’t a big fish, but one of the larger wild fish which put a fight way above its size before coming to the net where the barbless hook simply fell out.
With the fly washed and restored a couple more casts and a second fish was on, this was a smaller fish but no less welcome and popped back with no fuss.
I was taking it easy fishing to target where I seen fish rather than thrashing the water to a foam and sitting watching between.
The rises stopped as the sun brightened for a while and it got quite warm, I was fishing in my shirt sleeves and the upstream breeze was reasonably helpful.
As I approached the so far unfished deeper water at the head of the pool, I decided to try something I hadn’t used before.Unfortunately I managed to lose my fly in an overhanging bush so was forced to change my leader and fly. I bought these spiral indicators a few seasons back but have never really tried them out. So tied one on and put two nymphs under it, a black French Nymph and a wee Baetis pattern and tried this through the deeper water.
As I had been sitting sorting out my lader another angler came by, he said there were plenty fish rising round him but hadn’t managed to get one so far.
I can’t say I could it easy to cast, maybe I should have put a stiffer butt section onto my leader but I did manage to fish through the deep water but never had a sniff.
Time to move so I slowly wandered upstream, stopping to watch for activity. The wind by now had turned downstream and had a distinct edge to it. I watched for a wee while then a fish showed itself snatching one of these big flies from the surface. It was kind of hard to tell if it was a sizeable fish or not but only one way to find out. I tied on the one remaining CDC Greenwell’s again and fished upstream towards where I seen the fish take the fly. As soon As I got my fly in the right spot, BOOM! the fish took the fly. It came right towards me and I thought I would lose it for a second but managed to get the slack recovered and the fish, about the same size as my first was netted and released. No other fish showed and I carried on upstream. It warmed up again but the emerging flies were evident by their disappearance. They seemed to dry up. I never seen any further fish or flies upstream. As I sat on the high bank and considered my options a Stonefly nymph climbed up my waders, clearly readying to emerge into a fly. I decided to call it a day, content with my three small fish.
