I don’t know about you, but I don’t consider winter to have started until the December Solstice. I know “Meteorologically” winter starts on the 1st of December and runs until the first day of meteorological Spring- the 1st of March…. but this is all done for ease of statistical analysis comparing year with year not an actual reflection of where we are in the solar cycle. It must be the Pagan in me.
I find the solar based dates/events work better for me. If I consider the first day of winter to be the 21st December, then on the positive front I enter winter with the days lengthening out and the feeling that the darkness that enshrouds us here in Scotland at this time of year, is already receding. By the tail end of January already you notice there is still a little light in the sky on the clearer days at the back end of the month when you are already 4 weeks on from the shortest daylight.
Looking at the other end of the year, summer for me doesn’t start until the June Solstice, OK I understand that our very long days start to shorten pretty rapidly about three weeks after, but on the upside, the warmer weather is (hopefully) going to be with us for several months, often well into September, so I try to ride on a positive wave for as much of the year as possible.
But I cannot tell a lie, I detest the short dark days. Some folk are in my view overly eager to get Christmas lights on ( sometimes as early as the first week in November) but in my view this just makes the darkness of early January all the harder to get through as you have got so used to the cheeriness of a sparkly late Autumn/ early winter, everything looks suddenly bare. So here in Chez Halley (sic) we don’t put up a tree until a couple of weeks before the “big day” and it goes down pretty much as soon as the table has been cleared after Christmas Dinner….Ok a slight exaggeration but it all seems a bit pointless a week on….
Out in the Dark
So getting onto the point of this blogsite….fly-fishing, I went out yesterday for a few hours up to Orchill, where I have not been for quite a while. It was dark, from pretty much when I finally got out the house around midday (!) to when I rolled up back home in the pitch darkness at just after 4pm.
But I think I probably picked the best direction to head as on returning to Stirling it was not just dark but tipping down too. At least while it never brightened up at all up behind Braco, it never got more than drizzly and was mostly tolerable. Yes it was a little cold on the hands at times but it was bearable for the most part.
The fishing it has to be said was slow. There were not many anglers about in actual fact and I only really saw one catch consistently over in the corner by the mouth of the wee burn that enters the lochan. Most other anglers ( the boats included ) were only picking up the odd fish now and again. Yet there were plenty fish making their presence known, with splashes on top, happening right up to about 3pm when it noticeably abated.
For my part I had just tied some replacement Golden Damsel/Christmas tree decorations, call them what you will. Usually I tie these with Semperfli Extreme string ( I think its called) but I have either run out or lost my packet and wasn’t able to see it when I was in Angling Active a few weeks back. I did though see some similar looking chenile type material, and picked up one that is gold with UV threads, and the other that was silver and gold. The one I tied on was the UV variant and I flicked my fly out just by the tree on the bank by the lodge.
Something moved in close to the bank to my left and I kept watching and it happened a second time. I have to be honest and say I wasn’t totally sure it was a fish, the second splash I was able to see “something” and for a moment I wondered if it might be a small otter rolling over…but surely not? I cast down the bank about 6 feet out from the edge, just a short cast maybe 20 feet of line…and as I fished the fly back I could see a fish intercept then follow and finally grab the point fly.
Second cast, and to be fair my first “proper” cast. It was a Brown trout. I am not entirely sure if it was a wild or stocked fish, in shape and colouration it could easily be a wild fish but I did think the dorsal fin looked a wee bit clipped looking? Anyway, it was a fish and I was able to unhook it and return it without more than a second or two out the water in the net while I was able to reach down and slip the hook out its mouth.
I now started to fish round in an arc with my Intermediate line gradually increasing the distance, and I reckon maybe no more than five or six more casts and with the fly pretty near the bottom I felt some fairly solid resistance and tightened in to it, and it was indeed a Rainbow of about 2lb or thereabouts. It gave a good account of itself before I netted and unhooked it, also on the point fly…. so this alternative material works I think we can say.
I fished here maybe another half hour and never had any more offers so opted to venture up the roadside bank to my right and have a go there. I fished there about an hour and though I actually saw a couple of fish cruising in near the edge I wasn’t able to illicit any sort of interest from any and decided to try the far bank before it got too dark. It was a grey gloomy day though it stayed drier than a look at the sky would suggest. Yes the rain came on a few times but it was mostly fine drizzle and short lived and not intolerable.
Across the far side I had been fishing there about twenty minutes and got a fairly solid take that I tightened into and started to gain line on, it was a reasonable distance out and again the fish would need to have been fairly deep so I never caught sight of it. It was on a good 10 seconds or so when just like that, the line went slack. My flies were all intact and there was no real indication what had let the fish slip away. Not to worry, that’s angling.
I did get one other pull and I worked my way through about half a dozen other flies but by the back of three it was getting very dark and tying on a fly was becoming quite a challenge. I called it a day about half past the hour. I felt my casting was a bit rusty I have to say, it never seemed to flow, though a guy coming along the bank behind me at one point stopped as I had about 20 yards of line aerialised and he complimented me on the distance I was getting so that made me feel a bit better. Just need to get out a bit more but the cold and weather recently has not been conducive to heading for the bank. If I can get some time off work soon (probably in the New Year now) I hope to get out a bit more on weekdays- a few longer weekends are due me, hopefully to the river and stillwater.
