I Went Fishing!

Really!

It’s been a fishing desert here at The Unfamous Fly for these last 6 months. This wasn’t intentional. Winter as I think anyone knows was a total washout weather-wise, literally and metaphorically. Obviously, if you live near the rivers that are open for light line fishing in winter you can use simple observation to grab opportunities to get out even if just for a few hours. That’s not an option I have with an hour’s travel needed to get anywhere and with the weather we had it was often not a chance I was willing to take.

Then I had several health challenges that I won’t bore you with but they have caused me a lot of downtime in the winter season, where I couldn’t fish or couldn’t safely get out to fish even had the weather been OK. I am still dealing with the residuals of some of those issues now and as those have improved other activities have taken my time on the days when fishing was a possibility, but again the weather has been horrendous a lot of the time with massive downpours and often quite high winds and even very cold conditions…..then I caught COVID, which was a first after 4 year of its existence….

I failed to fish on my birthday which is a first in many years, it simply tipped down with rain for about 3 days at the time. And any days off that weren’t at weekends , yes it’s been horrible.

Monday this week was a Bank Holiday and though it’s not one I get in the formal sense, I take it as a day’s leave at work otherwise I would be the only person in! The plan was to go fishing on some river, but as I lay in bed on Monday morning listening to the rain once more utterly hammering down on the roof and in the garden….that was evidently going to be out of the question. All morning it continued to be bursts of torrential rain, the forecast was merely for short showers….yeah right.

The warmer, wetter atmosphere is pretty evident here now in the way we seem to get huge loads of water that’s been lifted from the North Atlantic and then is dumped on us in very short heavy bursts and it never seems to end. The longest dry spell I can think of this year is three days so far, but that might be wrong….it isn’t scientific just observation.

So all that said why bother with this blog at all? Well, actually I DID get out yesterday. I had spent the morning and early afternoon pottering about in the garage as the rain battered down in bursts outside. Then I noticed it seemed to abate a little and went and checked and my weather app suggested it might actually be a gap in the downpours for some hours…. Rivers were out, and I simply didn’t have the time now to travel so it was off to my local , Swanswater but at least it was somewhere. Even Coulter was out as with the dry spell the wind also picked up and it would have been howling up there.

It was surprisingly quiet along at Swannies, I expected it to be busier given it was a day off for some. Another car arrived behind me as I was tackling up and the angler who emerged said the same, he had expected it to be busier. He was telling me he was a salmon angler and was like me fed up with the rivers being continually blown out by high rainfall. He fished the Forth but once more it was too high and coloured to bother. So he decided to visit Swanswater for the first time.

Once I had my ticket I headed for the island in the lee of the wind, while I am willing to give it a go of fishing into a wind as I have not been out a while I wasn’t sure my casting would be fully up to it just yet.

In the event even with the wind diagonally behind me it was still tricky fishing into the channel in front of the island as the wind was gusting further out over the water and the tip of the line and your flies were being pushed left to right and were hard to drop on a particular spot. Even compensating for the wind seemed to just result in the flies landing further right than you would anticipate.

The only way around this was to put the flies down quite heavily, that’s Ok with a wee lure on but wasn’t ideal when I got onto the dries. That said it didn’t seem to stop the fish. The water was fairly coloured up and the fish seemed to be holding about 12″-18″ deep and were only coming up to look when something caught their interest. Near in to the bank there was a lot of debris on the water. I reckon the grass had been cut recently and the wind was throwing some of the cuttings onto the water, along with fallen leaves brought down by the sudden downpours. So it was a little bit messy at time catching stuff with your hooks.

I initially fished a few small lures but was shown no real interest, until I had a grabby take which was on a buzzer fished on one of the droppers in front of a small goldhead damsel. The Blue Trout that took it was about 2lb or so and had sustained a bit of damage to its head either from a Cormorant or a Heron by the looks. I didn’t see any Cormorants on this visit but there was a fairly bold Heron doing the rounds.

I couldn’t help noticing the odd bit of disturbance under the trees on the far bank and was sure there was a fish or two sitting there. Landing a fly accurately was difficult especially now I had put a small black parachute fly on point. I wasn’t sure if the y were getting terrestrials off the trees or something else maybe emerging there. While I never rose a fish there they did though follow me back a few times, I had one good knock and then a wee while later, a sharp hard pull. When I pulled the line it my dropper with a Diawl Bach was gone, totally snapped off.

I reckon a loop had got into the dropper with all the casting into the wind. After I retired it and had a wee move along the bank to the corner of the island I managed to get a fish hooked on the dry but this was a very gentle take and it was on the retrieve rather than off the top. I was far from convinced it was well hooked but the fish was powerful and without seeing it would reckon it was maybe a bit bigger than the earlier fish. But alas I never would see it as it simply slipped the hook while I played it.

The sun actually made an appearance in early evening and I could see why there was activity under the trees. There were loads of midges or other flies visible in the sunlight. Whether they were there before the sun appeared I can’t say but it would explain why the fish were active there.

I had a wee yellow Owl on point by now and managed to rise a Rainbow to this which was satisfying. Two fish netted isn’t bad when I am a bit rusty. I have to say I can’t help notice how much more dry fly fishing holds my interest than fishing with lures. While Lures are probably the way the majority of Stockies are caught ( unless bung fishing is your thing) it does start to bore me at times and I find myself clock watching when nothing is happening. Where as dry fly is just so absorbing and time just flies in, Before I knew it it was time to pack up and head for home. Hopefully I will be out soon, I have a few places I need to get to but just need this weather to stabilise a bit!