The last couple of days I have been down Motherwell way on a course, to get better qualified to fly my drone. After successfully completing the first part of my training on the fringes of the Aviation Industry last night, I decided that as the weather had somewhat surprisingly, stayed dry, that I should take the opportunity for a few evening hours on the Clyde.
The ticket search
I don’t though have a permit so the first thought was where to get a ticket, and the only place I knew off-hand was the Post Office at Crossford. I had just enough time to head there, I figured, before it likely closed for the day.
Out of Bounds
To wet a line in the Clyde Valley seemed the obvious decision, with little rain of late I figured up top would be quite low and add to this I didn’t have the time to head any further. I nipped down to the bridge at Crossford and discovered to my dismay that there is to all intents and purposes, nowhere to park. I recalled seeing something about this recently on the interwebs, the entrance to what is now called Clyde Valley Family Park has all these weird beetle shaped bollard things preventing parking. I do understand the folk that live in the wee cul de sac off to the left must get a bit pissed off with cars in their street so I can understand them wanting to restrict the actual street entrance. But the area in front of the gate too is now out of bounds and you can’t park in the family park as the sign says the gate is locked at 5pm. So basically unless you live in Crossford and can walk to the river, that’s it now inaccessible. Add this to the other restrictions in the Clyde Valley at Mauldslie Bridge and a few other spots, it is getting really hard for us outsiders to fish here now without some local knowledge.
Does anyone know what the score is with parking in Dalserf along on the big patch in front of the cottages at the end of the village?
Anyway, with all the restrictions I decided to head down to a wee section I have not visited in quite a while at Hazlebank. It’s a bit of a steep climb down to the river here. With the water being low though it did open up quite a bit more of the river than I anticipated so I was hopeful I would get fish somewhere.
There were basically four options here, surely one had to have a fish or two? Close in there was rocky, water with reasonable pace and plenty of holes for fish to find safety. Further out there was likely a similar bottom but probably a little deeper and more even with obvious feed lanes. Above was classic pocket water, and below, a long flat slow glide that might hold fish to target on the dry fly if a rise got going.
Clouds of Sedges
And there were sedges on the water, utterly millions of them moving in clouds over the fast water. I decided before wetting a fly to give the drone a wee fly to get a new section into my Let’s Fly the Clyde overhead video reference of the river. It will be a shorter segment than the others as due to the deep gorge and high trees It was difficult to maintain visual line of sight and signal with the wee Mavic Air, but it still gives the angler another wee view of the Clyde.
I hoped while I did this that I would become audibly atuned to the “normal” sound of the river and if anything moved I would notice, but it didn’t. With the drone back and sitting on a rock, I watched a few spots for a good 5-10 minutes but never saw anything I could hand on heart say was a fish. There was the odd swirl but it could so easily have just been eddies in the fast flowing water.
Another thing though was how cloudly the water was. It would be unfair to say it was dirty, but it was definitely a clearing river, I assume there had been some significant rainfall further upstream I was unaware of. The water was a slightly cloudy brown, not bad enough that you could not see the bottom in knee-deep water, but you would doubt a fish sat on the bottom would come up for a dry fly at the deeper side.
Bugging the Boulders
So I fished all the holes and eddies with several bugs over an area of about 30 metres or so, probably more, with several changes to cope with the varying depth and speed of water, and trying a number of patterns I would expect to get interest. Not so much as a tiddler.
In the Pockets
I moved up and tried the pocket water but to be honest it was even harder wading than where I started ( which was hard enough- especially on the knees) and probably just a little too shallow to be productive. I persevered for maybe 30 minutes though along the outside of a few seams and right in the holes under rocks. While I snagged plenty by some miracle I never lost any bugs!
The Feed Line
Back to the starting zone and I had taken care to leave the far feed line unfished previously. I tried a dry with a small nymph under it down the feedlines taking advantage of having my 5# rod along with me for the dries. With so much fly life I fully expected to see rising fish, and the problem to be getting an artificial noticed among them, but not a fish did I see.
By now the sun had fallen below the tree line and with the river looking darker and a definite chill I sat back and watched the flatter water below for signs of movement. I thought I saw a couple of rises a good 100 metres downstream and uncertain if it was even reachable took the 5# and a few dries and headed down the edge of the river.
The bottom here is big jagged slabs of bedrock. You could get a reasonable distance out in the river with care. The two rising fish I detected were though right across the stream under the overhanging trees and in typical fashion about as hard to get in position for as you could expect. I took my time though and did eventually reach a spot I reckoned I could cast above them.
Then I waited.
And waited more….
I was getting a bit cool now and there was a really unpleasant smell here, I couldn’t quite tell what it was, and didn’t see anything, but not far away, something was definitely decomposing. The sort of smell you get in November time around rivers with a salmon run when the spawned out carcasses come downstream and litter the banks.
A Fish Showed
Eventually, one fish rose, and I had a target, my first cast was probably a few feet short of the feed line. My backcast was badly hampered by the trees on my side of the river but using a side cast I was able to get my back loop under some overhanging branches and let the forward cast out with just enough reach to be in the fishes line of sight as it drifted. No interest after maybe 3 decent casts. I stopped and waited, again. Eventually, it rose again. I was pretty sure it wasn’t a fish of any size, but you can’t tell until it is in the net.
I changed from an obvious sedge pattern to a small black midge maybe about an #18. My second cast with this rose the fish but it rejected it without taking and never came again though it continued to rise for something- it certainly wasn’t spooked.
Defeated
I was though! Knackered, it had been a long day, with the light fading and a steep climb back to the car and a bit of a wade back to my gear, I was defeated. Some other time maybe. This season isn’t to be one of big browns for me it seems.
