Shear misery

Not been out too much recently mainly because I have been away with work and working nights. As holidays are looming I don’t want to be spending money ahead of those particular travels so I have had a couple of outings Sunday afternoon and last night, Monday on club waters.

Sunday was a disaster. I went up to Coulter, and there were quite a few boats out. One boat was on the pier in the process of departing and the guy who had it helpfully brought another boat in for me though it turned out to be full of water- presumably from recent heavy rainfall. The boat was moored the wrong way round on the pier as the guy couldn’t turn it with the weight of water so I did my best to tie it up at one end and climbed aboard to pump it out. After about 20 minutes of pumping, it was dry enough, so I was able to go get my gear loaded and motor fitted.

Time for me to bring another boat in, but of course this was full of water too, so was a real stiff pull to move. I was already at this stage wishing I had not bothered and gone somewhere else, but persevered. I managed to get the towed boat to the jetty but it was too heavy for me to move and all I could manage was to tie it bow first to the pier and hope it was OK like that. Fortunately the wind was blowing in to the pier so eventually it turned side on by itself.

This had all taken about three-quarters of an hour of precious fishing time. I reversed out from the pier and decided to just motor off a wee distance and  set up my rod in the vicinity of where I seen fish rise near the bank. As I did so the wind got up and I realised I was drifting in towards the bank. Not terribly close so I thought I better just give the motor a wee squirt and push me back out- I was a good ten yards from the shore. The motor was running but I realised I wasn’t going anywhere and in fact was still drifting in. I quickly grabbed the oars and paddled out and threw out my anchor- lucky I have one now!

Say what you like about them, but they are still a bonnie wee fish, the Perch, took my beaded wetfly on point

Time to look at the outboard. In short the shear pin had gone and the prop wasn’t giving any drive. No idea how that happened as I wasn’t aware of grounding, my suspicion is it was when I was trying to move the spare boat around into the pier. I had enough drive with a wind behind me to move out but as soon as I was against the wind the prop was useless. I was sure I had a spare in my boat box but was buggered if I could find it, so now relegated to rowing with all my gear on the boat against a wind. I decided to hold position and fish where I was, not ideal as I had seen nothing move here. Not a touch and increasingly I was wary of drifting down wind further, so in a lull decided to row up into the big bay opposite the boat house and anchor up wind. I seen a few fish move in the weeds but that was always going to be hard to reach in to the wind but made a reasonable if somewhat less enthusiastic effort of fishing here and had a few nips and one moderately sized Perch for my efforts.

Wasn’t aware of this waterfall above Larbert- stranger in a strange land

One of the boats with two men out, had been stationed near me and they called it a day and went in to the pier. Would you believe it they tied up their boat and left leaving two boats on the pier! Selfish twats! I was fed up aware with my oars I was going to have to move both these boats off the pier on my own to get in, and tea time was looming. I was not best pleased. So a relaxing afternoons fishing ended up a stress-fest of misery and was pretty sore after all the exertions.

Monday though was a nice day and my feet were not giving too much gyp so I decided to have a wee look down the river as I have not been for a while. I was keen to try somewhere I had not been on the Carron before and in a sense my decision was enforced when it transpired the road to Denny was closed and I was forced to head towards Larbert bringing me out at the Viaduct. I have looked here before but never cast a line as its always busy and full of bait anglers. But tonight it was quiet with only one angler out spinning and he was finishing up anyway. I decided to tackle up and give it an explore. A bit like busses you wait for ages and two come at once, I met a Bailiff then a second arrived! Never met one ever on the river! Clearly this is a hotspot for them.

Still a stunning night to be out despite the lack of obvious fish life

Fishing above the viaduct- had just lost my cast at this point, heading to the bank to tie a new tippet on.

I set up duo fashion with a klink and nymph and fished the first pool. There was one decent fish here right at the far side in the fast water but it was just too far and impossible to get a decent drag free drift, but a wee bit bigger water than I am used to on the Carron and a nice change. As I went to change location the first Bailiff came over to help me up the slope with my rod, and I ended up standing blethering for ages, by which time the sun was starting to turn the sky red. I fished the next run through initially klink and dink style ( and tried a down stream approach to the lie where the bigger fish had shown earlier) before changing to a pair of nymphs fishing a fairly short line. I had one knock before I managed to lose both flies on a submerged obstruction. I had barely seen a fish move since earlier and despite this decided to tie on a dry in the hope a late rise started. The second bailiff was coming down stream by now having been fishing himself above me and reported the same as me, nothing doing-  he said he had had a few wee Salmon parr on a dry but had seen no signs of bigger fish and reported it was disappointing there was no rise. By now the light was receding and getting too dark to see what you were doing. Home for tea and no medals again.