It is fair to say my 2022 season hasn’t gotten off to the most “flying start”. A perfect storm of mostly work, and to some extent weather has kept me away from the water pretty much since the season opened. As the long Easter weekend approached I hoped for a wee bit of rain so I might be able to venture down the River Carron (which seems to have been fishing reasonably well for early season) and there were some brief interludes of rain in the last week, but when I made it out on Friday afternoon it looked quite low and my hopes definitely took a knock.
I went to a point in the middle section of the LASAC water and was gearing up when another vehicle pulled up alongside and I was approached by a Bailiff. I am always pleased to see bailiff’s around on any water as it means there are people watching and taking an interest in what’s happening. We spent a fair time chewing the fat both about the river and Loch Coulter before I headed on my way. It was useful also as he pointed me to an access to the river that I wasn’t aware of ( I don’t visit this part often) and so that gave me a little piece of water to explore for an hour before I headed off the way I had planned to go at the outset.
I wouldn’t hesitate to say everything felt a bit rusty. In truth, it isn’t that long since I was out on a river, only a few months but everything felt kind of clumsy on this wee afternoon out.
The water it opened up was just a few small pools and riffles leading into them, and I have actually been to the area before but from the other side where the access to the pools is less easy. I fished them through with a couple of very small nymphs but had no takers and spent a fair bit of time clearing “rock snot” off my flies. I was surprised how prevalent it was as though the water was low and that doesn’t help with the growth of slime algae, it’s not been especially sunny or warm.
I did encounter a few fish rising in some very slow “canal-water” but on sitting on the high bank to watch it was evident these were just small fish, probably Smolts getting ready for the trip out to sea.
I retraced my steps and then made my way downstream but finding water to fish was proving to be a bit of a battle. It was very slow and low. I did see an extremely strange thing though. As I was walking down the bank ahead in the very still water close in tot eh edge I could see expanding rings indicating some sort of disturbance, that went on and on. I did actually manage to video it on my phone but with the lens on a phone being quite wide-angled and not great resolution when zoomed, it isn’t easy to see. But imagine someone got a small aquarium water pump and placed it in the river. It’s not enough to create a fountain but it’s pushing water about 2 inches up from the surface in a constant stream. That was exactly how it looked. At first, I thought it was maybe a small bird having a bath but as I got closer I could see clearly enough that there was no bird. This was water being displaced upwards from the river itself. Next, I wondered was there a small spring near the edge of the bank. I was soon able to discount that too.
I stepped away from the edge upstream of the disturbance and looped round to approach directly above the place where it was. When I looked over the edge ( the disturbance was out of sight while I looped around) it had stopped. All that was there were the upturned white bellies of some dead frogs. I can only assume that some creature, whether it was a rat, or even some fish was eating the dead frogs ( there was no real sign that the frogs had been picked at, at all, and as it held station at the edge it was disturbing the water in the way I had observed. It was really odd!
Anyway, I walked downstream fishing a few pockets until I reached a point where I think treated effluent maybe enters the river. There is always a strong chlorine-like smell of drains and I ventured no further. I had seen no sign of a fish, or any significant fly life to be honest, at all. It is still quite early so that latter aspect did not surprise me at all and the Carron takes a while to wake up from winter. I could not help but notice ( and smell) that the wild garlic is well on its way to being ready…nearly wild garlic pesto time.
I decided to tie on a team of small wet spider patterns with a beaded one on point, and to fish downstream swinging the wets in the water that didn’t really suit using nymphs in the manner I was rigged for, on the way back to the car. This at least made me feel I had covered what I could of the water reasonably well but my thoughts of catching a fish had already receded by this part of the afternoon, and I think I was treating it more as a walk by the river than a fishing outing.
So not the most auspicious start to the season, and while I am looking forward to a wee bit of warmth after what has been a fairly grey and cool spring so far, the river would definitely benefit from a few days of rain.
