A plan, no matter how detailed, rarely survives the first contact. So the maxim goes I believe in the military, once the enemy is encountered things change rapidly often in ways you never originally intended.
You have the known, unknowns and then the unknown, unknowns, I am trying to recall who said that? Donald Rumsfeld or someone of that ilk?
I am rambling now, but it kind of felt like this today when I finally headed out to fish for the first time this season. It actually feels like an age since I last fished, such has been the weather in the last month. But the forecast looked, reasonable today to finally get on the River Carron, for my first cast of the 2019 Brown Trout season.
Prior Planning
My plan had been concocted in the closed season when I did a wee recce of the bottom section of the river below Larbert. An area I have never fished and to be frank, I suspect it will be a bit like a jungle in places when there is growth on the trees, but I also reckoned that if I was a trout in the Carron an area like that with what appeared to be decent depth, and out the way, would be where I would head.
That and the fact that I disturbed a fish just having a look over the side of the bank on that reconnaisance visit a few weeks back!
I thought a few places looked open enough and “flat” enough to suit fishing a team of spiders, which is always a popular early season searching method. It allows you to cover a lot of water fairly effectively. The negative maybe being that even with a beaded spider on point, it can be hard to get the flies right down in any sort of pace, and if the fish are hard on the bottom because there is nothing to chase upwards, they might not be inclined to look in the area occupied by the spiders as they at first dead drift down then swing around and rise.
No need for an early start
I never headed down until around 11, as nothing much happens on our rivers before then anyway in early spring, and not the Carron especially until the middle of the day. The Carron can be a bit dead early on in the season and I have gone weeks without seeing so much as a midge in some seasons and so I have to say while I looked forward to a few hours on the water, I honestly was not that optimistic I would catch….but I would give it a good go.
I also wanted to try out my new rod, my Adams Max Series 10′ 2″ 3#. And this was kind of why things maybe didn’t entirely start as planned, that and just coming across likely spots that on first cast ( or contact) had me reviewing my methods.
I got the Adams primarily for fishing with the French leader and European Nymphing and arguably while fishing teams of spiders across and down isn’t maybe for the nymph purist, you can certainly fish them on a euro rig, even swinging, though maybe it isn’t ideal.
As I found!
In the urban river debris
The first area I tried was an opening between some trees and though I could kind of see the bottom close in I wasn’t entirely sure of the depth. Once in the water, it became evident it was pretty deep and while I could fish across and down, my point spider with a 3mm tungsten bead on wasn’t getting down in the slightly pacey water mid-current. I really wanted to be fishing close into the banks where I thought fish might be laying up. It was though a bit of a debris field underfoot close in, with old fence posts and bits of trees.
I changed the point fly for a heavy tungsten beaded Perdigone and for good luck, put the beaded spider on the middle dropper, leaving the Partridge and Orange on top. I was now getting down and felt I was fishing this short section better.
Onto the Upstream nymph in less promising water
Once I negotiated getting past more bushes I came to a much faster area where the faster food lane seems to converge down over some shallow pebble bottom. Easy wading, but would there be fish here in water that was fairly flying through and no more than 18″ deep? I very much doubted it but again adapted my set up to the water, and by now was really fishing conventional short line Euro Nymph methods, working upstream from the bottom of the narrowing.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, I never touched a fish and decided to keep moving on down getting closer to the areas I had originally planned. It is worth saying I was very happy with the new rod, it is ridiculously light, and I love the action which means you seem to feel every pebble on the bottom as your flies trundle through. It is a perfect match for my Hardy Ultralight reel too.
Fly life
The next area was much better suited to fishing across and down (if you could excuse the rather creepy “dead baby”) and was pretty deep. I opted to change reels putting on my wee New Era reel with 3#DT line. The New Era feels so heavy after the Hardy reel, but the set up actually cast really well. This was despite the rather nasty wind that kept coming and going. I felt I fished right down the deep pool in front of me pretty reasonably and round a very eroded corner in the bank until I reached water that was just too deep to get to.
I had noticed rather encouragingly a couple of fairly big flies drifting downstream past me, as I fished. I couldn’t honestly say I saw them close enough to positively i.d. them, but would suspect they were LDO’s. A few smaller flies, that I would hazard a guess are Pale Wateries were also appearing now and then. These were both a surprise this early on, on the Carron. I never saw anything take one though I have to add.
I fished my team of spiders, changing a couple as I went just to give the fish ( if any were seeing my flies) something else to look at but never had any indications of interest by the time I run to a very deep section that had some oddly swirling water that I struggled to make sense of. Is there a spring under part of the river, as the surface almost seemed to boil and was flowing in odd directions?
Making good on the original plan
I worked around the trees here and finally got to the glide I had originally planned for my wet fly fishing. It was probably a bit shallower than I anticipated, it had looked a reasonable depth last time I was here, and even today standing on the bank it looked OK but it soon shallowed out and though deeper in the edges, and swinging my flies right in under the cover of the bank, I never felt I was fishing it that well. About halfway down the glide, I decided to fish the remaining half, in an upstream direction with some heavy bugs on the French leader.
It only took a few minutes to set up, I needed a break anyway, and again the depth was all over the place, one minute you were fishing in water that seemed to be thigh deep the next, it was below your shins.
I did though feel I was being thorough and finally, at last I had a wee bump and my first totally wild Brown Trout came to the net, nothing huge, maybe about 8 or 9 inches at most, and a very very silver coloured fish it was too, It took the point bug hard on the bottom and gave a very good account of itself on the way to the net for release.
By now it was after three the wind was colder and I had not seen any flies for about an hour, I had broken the duck, started my season and put a small but welcome bend in my new rod. Can’t really ask for more this early on in the season.
