It has been unusually sunny, dry ( very very dry- I think I recall maybe 2 wet days in the last 8 weeks) and dare I say it, warm. Well, it’s definitely warm if you are out of the breeze, the air has not quite warmed up yet so if you ar in the shade or somewhere a little draughty it can feel distinctly cool. But with the lack of rain, I imagined the River Carron, which is fed from Carron Valley Reservoir mainly, would be on it’s bones. But surprisingly it wasn’t bad at all.
Granted I opted to head downstream to Larbert Viaduct as I was betting on the upper reaches being borderline unfishable. I arrived to an empty river and glorious sunshine though there were a few scattered clouds about and it wasn’t full-intensity bright sunshine the whole time. Also with part of the river bank quite high around the river here, there were plenty of shady areas.
There was tons of fly life and I was really wanting to fish dries but it was still fairly early- around 10:30 and often fish don’t start looking up until nearer midday at this time of year so I decided to take my 4weight Greys Streamflex, tie on a long tapered Carp Leader to act as a French leader, a length of indicator nylon and a 6 foot tippet with a couple of small weighted Nymphs. I could easily remove this entire rig and change to a dry fly leader if conditions deemed it worthwhile.
I was taking my time to set up when a car pulled up and a guy got out already fully clothed for fishing- waders on and rod evidently set up in the back of the car. He had clearly seen me and wanted to fish through all the obvious spots before I did and he hurried off to the water.
No rush. I just got my gear on and with everything collected made my way down to the pool by the viaduct. The other angler had already moved up to the next pool ahead of me upstream.
My very first cast into the head of the pool registered a take, and I pulled out a small silver smolt. I had heard last week a few were about and could be a bit of a nuisance but I wasn’t complaining. A few more casts and I had a few more pulls and tugs and another wee smolt hooked itself before flicking off without my intervention.
I fished the run into the pool and then moved up a little further to fish a wee channel that sometimes holds the odd fish, but frankly, it was too low today.
By now the other angler was out of sight upstream, having fished the next pool up again and presumably was up around the bend in the river at the next one….definitely speed fishing…
I fully expected to maybe get a bit interest in the deeper water under the foam here, but nothing substantial seemed interested, just more Smolts.
I gave the pool a thorough fish through and as I did there suddenly were clouds of midges on the water, billions and billions of them wafting back and forth on the breeze….thankfully not bitey ones!
The other angler I noticed passed by me heading back down river as I fished having completed the beat ….my pace was much more leisurely.
In the next section, I opted to fish darker but thinner water before trying further out and in fact saw my first evidence of surface activity albeit pretty obviously smaller fish, probably more Smolts. After trying this and returning another of the silver fish, I changed flies to a couple of more drab natural patterns.
Apart from another Smolt, no proper fish seemed to be interested, and again I moved on up to the limit of the beat. I managed to make my way out into the river a decent way- it was a little precarious on the uneven bedrock and I tried to cover as much of the pool as my rod and leader would allow. Then I felt a solid take and this wasn’t a smolt. A nice wee wild Brown Trout, not tiny, barely half a pound I would say, but quite fat and definitely not a stocked fish. It put up an appropriately decent fight for a fish its size and it had taken a rather drab olive nymph right off the bottom.
With no further action after another 10 minutes or so I decided to try further downstream below the bridges, sometimes you pick up the odd fish either in the run down the far side ( it was too shallow for anything but tiddlers today) or sometimes a downstream dry fly picks off the odd fish in the slower “canal water” further down.
I sat on the bank side for a good hour as well as a wee patrol down the banks ( someone has done a decent job of making this section a bit more accessible on foot I notice) but never caught sight of so much as a solitary rise.
So a nice wee session, was home by the back of 2pm but most enjoyable. I did think to fish further upstream but on one section the road was closed to access for some sort of road works and another was blocked by a lorry ( I could have waited and probably got in eventually) but I wasn’t confident about where I was going to leave the car given the truck situation so gave it a miss. Plenty time to get out in the weeks ahead.
