Follow the Leader

As it is my birthday I always have a few days off work around it and try to get out fishing for a day somewhere. Maybe with my recent health problems a full day is a bit ambitious, though if I take it easy and have plenty breaks I can get by  the better part of daylight hours given the short days at this time of year.

It’s rare I am able to get on a river round my birthday and even generally its been a stuggle this last 12 months but I came up with a plan for the event this year. Plan A was to try get onto a beat I have been told about on the River Eden on Cumbria. Ambitious given I have not driven that sort of distance in a while, but if the weather was good it might be a are opportunity to try. However I called the owners of the beat in quetion on Monday and they told me that while it had not been raining much in recent days everytime the water fell somewhere close to fishable it immediately rose again, rendering it unfishable. The reckoned there were regular releases from Ullswater affecting it so that knocked Plan A on the head.

Plan B ( always have a Plan B) was to go to another river I had always wanted to try for the Grayling on, the Leader. The River Leader is a small tributary of the  Tweed and as I understand it is in two main sections, one I think belongs to a fishing association around Lauder the other around Earlston. I hadn’t found info on the Lauder section before I went and while I have no doubt there are grayling in the upper half of the river, generally Grayling prefer slightly slower steadier water which is more likely to be found where a river slows as it comes off the faster upper reaches. ( Thats the theory anyway).

I had managed to make contact with one of the comittee of the Earlston Association’s stretch beforehand and established that I could still get a ticket for a mere £10 a season at the Earlston Service Station. So it was there I headed for first. Now I say that I have not fished the Leader before and thats certainly true in recent times, however when I got down there I remembered a fishing trip with a couple of friends in my late teens or early twenties when we fished somewhere about there, and I recall we stopped in to a local monastery on the banks of the Tweed along from Leaderfoot to get permits for some stretch of water around here. I know it wasn’t the Tweed but on reflection it might have been the Leader though what section we were fishing I cannot recall. I do remember it being fairly shallow and a somewhat fruitless trip though!

23rd January 2014 at leaderfoot, looked like a late autumn day, it was slightly warm in the sun

The Leader is though a river you need to fish when there is some water on the gauge otherwise I fear it would be somewhat thin and showing its bones in many places. There was about 18 inches on the SEPA gauge before I left home so that seemed ideal and certainly the river seemed a nice height, good enough for Grayling I would have thought but no need to be waist deep either.  When I arrived at Earlston it was a relief to see that the overnight torrential rain we had had at home had not made it over the hills and it looked to have been dry overnight. In the service station I bumped into another couple of anglers getting tickets, they were chaps from Musselburgh ( my home town) and had fished the river before with some success. The Earlston section is in three, I guess you would call them, beats. Leaderfoot just above the junction with the Tweed, Earlston itself and the upper section around what I think is called Galadean. I hoped to fish the Earlston section but the two chaps who showed me the access were obviously intent on fishing there and while they were clearly happy to allow me to fish along with them, I had my own ideas for the day and wanted my own space, so took my leave and headed down the road to Leaderfoot. There were a couple of other possible access points on the way down and the river looked fairly open here, but it looked a bit of an assault course to get over fields so I decided to see what Leaderfoot was like. I was lucky and got parked right beside the water and tackled up. The river was in good looking condition though it seemed to be carrying a little silt, a bit like the slightly red earth I seen on the Teviot once, but you could see the bottom and it wasn’t murky at all.

I set off on foot along what I think is the west bank heading upstream and looked for somewhere to access the river to get fishing. But first I wanted to have a go with my kick sample net. I made this a while back and the opportunity has not arisen to make use of it, however I fond an ideal spot and gave it a go- it worked a treat and I soon had a selection of aquatic critters to see so I knew what was potential Grayling food. There were Stone clingers, Chironomids and a large Stonefly nymph in my “haul” and a pale olive “agile darter”, don’t ask me to name the species I am no entymologist but dark olive, small pale olive and pale brown seemed the order of the day all with two or three tails. I was already rigged with my favourite point fly of red tag jig nymph, a light olive hares ear and a shrimp on top dropper. There were no shrimps in my kick sample interestingly.

I then – finally- got started fishing. I thought I had a wee knock on my first run down here but thatw as it, the water was fairly steady and level in depth at a couple of feet.

I relocated up a little and found a really nice fast run with good depth and a very fishy looking back eddy with a deep hole under, I was positive this would hold fish. It was a bit of an upstream wade but I made a good attempt to fish it thoroughly but nothing showed. I could see right into the hole, with my polaroids and never detected sight of any fish or movement in there. A change of flies was now in order to be safe and I put some patterns on a bit more reminiscent of my kick sample findings but still nothing.

Just after this it was time to move up again but then I realised my error. The river had a well marked footpath I was following however, it veered off from the river. I started out this way only realising that it was getting higher and further from the water all the time. I stopped an decided to turn back and as I did a dog walker appeared so I asked her if this track returned to the waterside further along. She didn’t know but then added that there was a path across the river on the other side.

I decided to head back and try find a way over. It was a little bit “combat fishing” but I found my way down to the bankside and could see some nice deep holes below but it wasn’t possible to fish from here, so I had to fumble around until I found somewhere I could safely get into the river and wade over from. A more able bodied angler would have done this easy but for me it was a bit of a struggle.

I then worked my way upstream fishing maybe 3 or 4 pools and runs on the way up but never encountered a fish and never detected a take. I did think a fish swirled at my bugs as I retreived them at one stage but it might have just been an eddy in the river. I did though manage to lose a number of flies in the heavily overgrown bank side trees and in some storm washed branches, these as you would expect all looked fishy areas but were high risk fishing with the heavy bugs keen to quickly wrap themselves round the branches on contact. I eventually decided I had wandered far enough, I was wearying of trying to find fishig room between the trees and was getting a bit tired clambering along the banks so decided to head back and relocate to the Earlston beat which looked easier to access.

On the way back I bumped into the guys from Musselburgh, they had relocated here having found no fish on the middle section. They I think were losing a few bugs in the vegetation too!

After a short chat of reminiscing over school acquaintences we had ( I never knew the guys but we both knew some of the same people from school) we parted company and I headed for Earlston.

Some bugs to “match the hatch”

While the access they showed me was easy for car parking to be honest it was a bit tricky for river access away from the immediate section. But being as it was mid afternoon by now and the aches and pains were making themselves known I decided just to fish this section thoroughly and call it a day. I had changed bugs again keeping on the more natural looking side of things though my middle bug had a pink tag. The wading was fairly easy and I covered above the footbridge easy enough and at last had a take, I great wee fight ensued and I managed to land the wild looking Brown Trout of about half to three quarters a pound that had taken the pink tagged bug on the middle dropper. By this stage I had run out of video batteries so didn’t get it on video but did get a shot. It was a very full tailed fish in lovely condition ready for the new season. It went right back fit as a fiddle.

A bonnie wee trout from the River Leader, safely returned

I fished on down below the bridge, but never detected any fish and as the sun dropped behind the trees on the hills behind me it was time to call it a day. Very enjoyable a glorious day to be out, almost like a sunny late autumn day, it was so warm at times I never really fully wrapped up  until the last half hour or so when the chill made itself felt round my neck. No Grayling but not a blank.