One In The Net, Finally and the Missing Rod

I was starting to forget what it was like to catch a fish. I have actually been out once or twice over the last few months but have struggled to get so much as a pull never mind land a fish. On several occasions it wasn’t just me who struggled, it was evident the fish simply were not playing for anyone else either, so I didn’t feel so bad….but I am jumping too far ahead…. more of that later.

I took a day off on Friday at very short notice, literally at close of play on Thursday at work, I decided a short week was needed. And while the weather wasn’t looking spectacular at all for Friday I reckoned it might be a nice enough day to get out and have a wee go at the Grayling on the River Clyde. While you won’t need to me to tell you about how much rain we have had of late, the river, at least on the SEPA River Levels data looked fishable.

Now, normally I would get my gear together the night before but in this case, I decided just to chill, get up fairly sharp, get my gear together and head out at a sensible time, maybe around 9-9:30. I wasn’t worrying about being up to my waist in river water at the crack of dawn.

That’s when I realised I had a problem. No rod.

If you read this page with any regularity you might remember I broke the tip of my Adams 3# rod last season on an outing on the Annan…. the second time I have broken a tip on this rod, they really are incredibly delicate. I decided ( in my wisdom) to fall back on my Hanak Czech Nymph rod which I used for years. A wee bit heavier than the Adams and less feel but a perfectly competent rod for light line fishing. But For the life of me, I can’t find it. I have utterly no idea where it can be. WHile I have a 4# Grey Nymph rod I find I sometimes bounce fish off with it so prefer the 3# for my Grayling angling.

The last time I had it out was on the Clyde and I recall having it heading back to the car for definite, but from there, it’s a blank. Have I left it on the roadside somewhere? I thought maybe it had fell down behind some stuff in my garage, so Saturday was spent clearing out my garage around my bench in particular to see if the missing rod had maybe rolled off the side of the bench in amongst some decorating sheets….but no….oddly the rod tube is in my rod rack…… ahhhh wait a minute….

Anyway, I spent far, far too long on Friday trying to locate the rod, and having got all my gear, minus the rod, together and into the car I decided eventually that this wasn’t going to be a go’er …it was already past 10:00am and that I might as well abandon this idea and just head somewhere local for a bit of Rainbow Trout fishing.

That was the cue to get all my river gear back out of the car and then load my “regular” gear into the car…conveniently forgetting my net. I even had this in my hand at one stage but somehow it ended up back in the garage. This was all turning into a case of an absence of the 7 P’s. An old military term, Prior Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance. Had I actually heeded this and got myself sorted the evening before I wouldn’t have still been arsing around my garage at 10 in the morning on a day off!

So that is how I ended up at Swanswater again (with a borrowed net) , getting tackled up at 10:30. It seemed to be close to dead as I pulled into the car park, there were only two cars there but in the time it took me to tackle up about 6 more cars and about 9 more anglers all arrived! It was also a lot cooler than I anticipated with a slight breeze, so I am not sure what the conditions would have been like had I ventured south to the river anyway….it is 30 odd miles away so the weather can be a lot different.

While in the car park tackling up one of the Swanswater regular, think his name is Danny, wandered in from the loch with a full bag of fish. He weighed them in before returning to continue fishing on Catch and Release. Clearly, he was having no issue catching them. He was fishing on the platform by the loch outflow and it became pretty evident he was sat on a pod of fish. When I got up to the loch I went around to the quietest spot which was more or less directly opposite him on the corner of the island, and I watched him for an hour land a fish a cast. What was pleasing to see was that he had no indicator on, unlike pretty well every other angler on the water. It’s almost become the default go-to method these days so I almost feel a bit of a spare part as I straight-line that my flies rather than watch a miniaturised bubble float with my hands in my pockets.

I had initiated my own fishing with an intermediate line but watching Danny on the far side i could see he was on a floating line and certainly a few fish had moved near the surface around me so maybe they weren’t that deep, despite the cold and the water felt cold too.

After plugging away for about 40 minutes or so and having tried several different lures, mainly changing colours, on the intermediate I decided to put on the floater and swap to buzzers. I fished these for maybe ten minutes when I felt the line tighten, no obvious take just a heaviness in the line, and lifted into what transpired to be a nice wee Golden Trout that took the weighted pink buzzer I had on the point. The fly literally fell out of it’s mouth as soon as I released the strain in the net which is always good as it means there is no faffing about trying to unhook a fish with cold hands and the droppers getting caught on things too.

Not a huge fish, no more than Two and a Half pounds but a huge huge relief to finally get “something”.

On the far side by now things had gone quiet for Danny and around the loch there wasn’t much action. A couple of anglers had moved in beside me. One was fishing an indicator with some sort of bright neon fluorescent yellow snake-type thing under it, maybe a yellow wotsit…. anyway he seemed to be attracting fish with that and had three in fairly rapid succession before things dried up on that front as well. I stayed with straightlining buzzers and had one more really hard almost violent pull that didn’t hook up before all my activity ceased as well.

I am finding just now, and I will add, it isn’t encouraging me to get out fishing, that when I stand for any length of time that my left ankle is really starting to hurt, It has been a problem with my arthritis for a while and nothing much seems to be happening on the medical front so I assume its something I just need to persevere with. Walking oddly is less of an issue than just standing…so it kind of limits how far my patience is willing to stretch.

Anyway, because of this and the cold that was eating into me, I retired for a cup of tea and a blether with Alistair who was manning the lodge/shop and then once warmed up, returned to plug away for a wee while more. By now I had moved to the other side of the bridge and decided ( when the swirling wind let me) to try to throw a fly into where the lily pads had been a few weeks ago. When fishing here the last time I had found that if you dared land a fly on the lily pads themselves and pull it into the water ( assuming it didn’t snag) that it aroused the interest of a pretty big fish whose head appeared out between the pads a couple of times and chased the fly but never quite managed to get hold of it. It was though good fun. Well, the pads have gone now but the stalks remain and as my fly dropped into the gap between them I had a huge sharp pull but again the fish didn’t connect.

The chap that is now working at the fishery was out doing some maintenance activities and he saw the pull as well but could only commiserate that the fish never hooked up.

With about 40 minutes left I went to the wee ponds….I was in two minds just to pack it up but had another 20 minutes or so and managed one more sharp tug. There was one lad fishing an indicator and he was on something like 12 fish when I got there. It seemed the bung was likely the most effective method, overall, the fish didn’t seem to want much movement but some of the “flies” being used weren’t really my cup of tea so will leave that to them that wish to fish this way.

STOP PRESS! The missing rod turned up as a result of writing up my blog here! I was thinking back to when I last had it and recalled that in fact the last time I was on a river, the Clyde, I had taken my Daiwa 5# rod NOT my Grey’s 4# Nymph rod as well as the Hanak and to make carrying stuff easier I put the 3# Hanak in the 5# rod, rod tube…it couldn’t still be there could it? It is still lying in my car- I went and looked and there it was all the time!