Down the River ( Carron) up the (Swans) Water

The Brown Trout season approaches apace and it seems to me, like no time at all since the 2018 season closed. Maybe it is a sign of getting old and how time seems to get ever shorter, or maybe it is just it has been a fairly mild dry winter and how I have been out on the rivers in particular quite a bit.

Saturday- Blowing a Gale

The dregs of storm Erik were still with us on Saturday and it was very windy though actually pleasantly mild, and there had been a tonne of rain overnight. Something we have been needing to be fair. With the approach of a new season and with little else to do I took myself off down to the bottom of the River Carron. I have been fishing the Carron now for several years and there is a section I have never visited. As I have been giving my River Carron information page a comprehensive update recently it seemed like a good time to try explore this lower part of the river, and talking (in the online virtual sense) to the former River Manager, Bob Baird, I learned where I could get parked to explore this section.
Most folk I talk to about the Carron talk about many of the places as “locals” with local names. Not being born and bred here, it isn’t always easy to understand where people are talking about or where they mean when referring to places to fish or to park.

I found out about car parking below the Larbert Viaduct section ( about a slow as I tend to venture) at the Dorrator “Swing Bridge” so made this my first stop on Saturday afternoon.

I had an interesting explore down both sides of the river though run into a few blockers with the remnants of some flooding from the day and night before. Despite a lot of backtracking at times, a hole opening up under my foot while standing on the bank ( a hollow that was knee deep!), and scaring the wits out a fish which was lurking under the bank at one place, I learned a lot about these previously unseen areas.

I walked until I could go no further and then took a drive down to the Camelon end of the river near the old Carron Works, and had a look at access from that end, whether I will ever fish so far down I don’t know. Most of the photo’s I took will be on my River Carron page and some will also be added to my new River Carron fishing map.

Sunday -surprisingly nice

I had no intent of going fishing Sunday until I saw the weather, it was really very settled and sunny. Not as mild as Saturday but certainly as nice as a day gets at this time of year.

I spent most of the morning cooking for my wife’s “birthday tea” later in the day and then headed out for a couple of hours at Swanswater. I expected it to be busy but it was very quiet.

As I tackled up in the car park I got chatting to a lad coming off the water, and he told me it had fished OK though took a bit time to locate the fish. He said he had fished Saturday with a group ( in the gale) and struggled in the boats until one of his group on foot got in amongst the fish behind the Island where the burn enters. Once located he said they all took turns and all got a bag limit fishing Ace of Spades- it was apparently all they would touch.

He told me having returned Sunday, there were no fish there today but he had eventually found some just off the sluice ( remember peg 24?) and had bagged two and returned another 4 on a small humungous ( which he offered me to be fair but I had identical ones of my own). Today they wouldn’t touch the Ace of Spades!

Nearly everyone else I spoke to or overheard had struggled and there were several blanks.

So off to the Sluice and I was a wee bit miffed to find there was a rather difficult head on wind blowing in here. Nonetheless, my fourth cast fishing right across the dam wall encountered first a fish, then a snag.

I felt the fish take and after a short run things went disconcertingly solid. I initially could still feel the fish but it seemed one of my flies was firmly stuck on the dam wall as it sloped down subsurface maybe about 6feet down and 10 -12 feet out from the dyke.

By the time I freed it, the fish had taken flight and was gone. When I got my Humungous back it was enveloped in Slimey gunge off the wall, making me wonder if it was the Diawl Back the fish took. Having stayed here ( probably too long in hindsight) for another 45 minutes or so, nothing else showed interest and I was fishing right down and slowly.

Eventually I decided to try the other end of the dam wall then with no success here, went up the top end of the main water. I thought I was alone but as I made my way up I bumped into Alastair the owner and he pointed out another chap fishing out of my line of view earlier. While I never saw or heard any fish being caught in my hour so far, the chap had caught a few up the top end. We got talking and I asked him what he was catching on. He asked me, Do you know what a Jersey Herd is? I replied, it sounds like something to do with cows! He very kindly gave me one of the flies he was catching on, a Jersey Herd.

The Jersey Herd

Not one I was familiar with- a Jersey Herd. Apparently, in days of old, he told me, the body of the fly was tied with a strip of the gold foil taken from a pint of Gold Top Milk. His variant had a fluo-orange hackle and Orange floss body, and the tail and back was Peacock Herl, tied on a long shank hook- very old school.

Getting cold

I gave it a go and I know a few fish saw the fly as surprisingly, as the sun fell and temperature dropped, fish started topping near me! By half four I could literally stand the cold no more, I couldn’t feel my fingers and my back was getting sore with standing, so I called it a day. More fish showed down by the dam wall, and I tried a rather half-hearted couple of flies over these too, a small midge spider and a lure but they weren’t having it.

A blank.