This weekend was meant to be the long awaited visit to the Tweed, to what is normally a salmon beat but which for a limited time permits a small amount of Grayling fishing.

The weather was so bad last week that there was no chance of this going ahead, and the river level near the planned location was close to 7 feet!.

So with a Christmas do at work also planned for Friday (for which I was promising to stay “dry” to go fishing) the shackles were off, a hangover on Saturday ensued and no fishing took place!

Sunday came and I had some travel late in the day to contend with for work, so took a few hours out on Sunday afternoon to go to my local (Swanswater) to get a few hours in and redeem the blank from last Sunday.

You can tell whats coming here.

You can.

eh?

Yep- four hours of trying like a bear to get a fish and nothing! The water was fairly clear, though still a little higher than normal. It was VERY cold and their is a school of thought that says if the air temperature is lower than the water, you are going to struggle. And Struggle I did. Behind the island I tried initially some lures, black and green, blobs (told you I would use them) on an Intermediate line. Nothing. There were fish there, definitely, I could see the odd one turn near the surface, right in front of me. But never got a touch to any lure. I swapped to Buzzers, and never got a touch to these either. I tried some different colours- still nothing. After a few heavy bouts of snow it was time to move to the front of the island, and trying both methods, Buzzers and Lures, still nothing. This area usually does me OK with Buzzers, especially bloodworm patterns- nothing. I did even swap to a slow sinking line to get down quickly and went back to lures, initially green and black, but then went to a white bunny Leach and a Egg laying blob on top dropper. It was starting to get darker and very very cold so worked my way right round the island and up the west side of the main loch. Once firmly on the west side I started getting knocks. And they came and came, I must have had 6-9 tugs on the lures, they were clearly following them in and I m pretty sure it was the Bunny Leach they were hitting but nothing took. The Egg Laying Blob was to small not to have got a hook up I am sure. And I had no way of fishing smaller on the BL and it had little or no “tail” so it wasn’t like this was an option.

And that was pretty much it- what exactly do I need to do to get something regularly here? Last winter I bagged up EVERY time I came- dunno whats going on now? Must do better.

*Same Sh*t, Different Day.