I have had a week off work this week with the main intent of getting on and closer to finished with the garden project. I have been reasonably successful in this aim and got some stuff finished, but there has been a stress factor in the mix that by the end of the week was doing my head in.
For the last 11 months there has been work going on in a derelict old mill shed plot, just next to my house ( across a narrow road actually). I have been hoping someone would redevelop the plot for some time as the shed ( about the size of a couple of football pitches maybe at most), has been an eyesore for all the years I have lived here. But then you know that old saying…Be careful what you hope for…..
Despite a significant amount of the old building having literally fallen down I think it was in 2011 during the now legendary “Hurricane Bawbag”, Central Demolitions moved in last September to remove the remaining 6 feet perimeter and floor of the building and that took 6 weeks of at times some ridiculous levels of vibration and noise. Since then the developers have been on site doing ground work and in almost a year have yet to lay so much as a single brick. Day after day of 8am to 4pm excavators trundling up and down shaking the very foundations of my house. It does your head in. A long lie on a weekday is an impossibility.
Night shift periods ( of which I have one coming up next week) are a nightmare.
Normally when I am working from home in my office I have headphones on, am in calls or have some sound on in the background and other than the vibration, can block the noise out a bit. But this week I have been in the garden all week, and to add to the situation they seem to be spending all their time working directly adjacent to my house. The noise of the excavators droning, digging, trundling, whining, banging and thumping has frankly driven me utterly nuts. Plus some of the guys who drive these excavators are just total inconsiderate idiots. One jammed a bucket on his digger earlier in the week and thought it was perfectly reasonable to literally bang the bucket on the ground nearest my house 6 or 7 times sending shockwaves though the place like I was being shelled. By Thursday I had had enough. I literally could not concentrate on the garden work and was having some power tool issues in to the mix that saw me just chuck everything into the wheelbarrow, lock it all in the garage and throw the fishing gear in the car and head out.
Cocksburn Bound: Thursday
I headed up Cocksburn and thankfully there were no swimmers, few walkers and only three anglers about. It was very bright and windy though and so I found myself heading up to the east end to try find some shelter from the blustery conditions. Here there is a lot of weed and fishing more than a single fly on tackle that is too light is going to be a problem. So you are kind of hoping for a bit of a rise to try a dry fly. What can I say, in a nutshell, it didn’t happen. Yes, the odd fish showed here and there but nothing that rose steadily or seemed “targetable”. I tried a good few flies but never managed to raise the slightest look of interest from a fish. That isn’t to say others weren’t having more luck. There was an angler out on a float tube who nailed 4 fish under the dam wall almost as soon as he launched his tube, and another had one close to first cast from the south side.
I did hear that a couple of guys were up in the morning and had 10 fish between them too, so I think it is just a case of wrong time wrong conditions and maybe wrong spot . But I nonetheless had a pleasant ( and peaceful time) and left fishless around tea time.
Swanswater: Friday
I still could not face another day of excavators and noise on Friday and having a need to go to Swanswater on “club business” I decided I would just head over and spend a day there fishing while I was at it. It was remarkably quiet for a Friday ( at least initially) and I had pretty much the pick of the water to fish on apart from the two pegs nearest the dam on the east side. The wind such as it was, was from the east and all the anglers both there early and through the day, seemed set on fishing with the wind to their backs. While it is always nice to have the wind behind you, if everyone does it, it can only have the effect of pushing the fish further out from that bank and so you end up having to cast farther to reach them. I opted for the corner of the island which gives a good nearly 270 degree arc of fishable water to choose from and was also not to bad for weed which is a bit of a problem just now near the margins.
I was having to cast into a wind at times but it certainly wasn’t unmanageable. I started on a single fly set up with my wee Golden Damsel lure on and about 10 casts in I hooked into my first fish of the day, a stunningly coloured Blue Trout. Quite a surprise I have to say as there were a lot of Golden Trout about ( which were very spooky all day long) and I tend to find Blues to be more of a sucker for more natural patterns.
I stuck to a floating line all day though did swap to a Snowbee Extreme line when the wind strengthened a little to give a bit more punch into the wind ( at the expense of finesse and delicacy). Quite a few anglers were trying midge tips or Intermediates as the fish seemed reluctant to come up for much through the day but the down side to that was they were picking up a lot of weed on anything but a more brisk retrieve.
I opted for heavier point flies to get down and on the whole I never had much bother with the hooks getting fouled up. One angler who had a couple of fish before I arrived by the dam wall joined me on the island and dropped one fish on a team of buzzers but I think the wind and the weed were annoying him and he went back tot he dam where I later saw him net a couple more. I usually move about at Swanswater but as by midday the entire east bank was filled up I saw little advantage to trying to fisn new water when I knew there were fish right in front of me ( albeit a fair cast out) so stayed put until quite late on.
I was getting constant pulls in one distant spot and after a few fly changes did manage a second Blue Trout on an Olive Damsel. I was lucky to get this one to the net as it took a dive into the weed just as I was about to net it and for a minute I couldn’t budge it. When it came free I thought I had pulled the hook but instead had uprooted some weed that wer enow over the fish.
I then swapped to dries ( not because any fish were rising particularly often, just to try different methods). I also fished a buzzer under the dry but neither of these worked at all. I then fished the damsel again with a couple of bushy wet flies ginked up on droppers. Almost right away the Heather Fly Snatcher was grabbed right off the top by a Golden Trout which took off at a furious rate. Unfortunately, the fight only lasted 10 seconds or so as it was able to slip the hook. I continued to get lots of pulls on the Damsel too but they just were not for committing fully to the take.
I noticed a few fish rising under distant overhanging trees and decided it might be a laugh to try some terrestrial patterns in place of the Damsel and tied on a few foam beetle patterns given to me by Fish 4 Flies last year. These instantly had the fish interested and the number that rose to look was incredible. One goldie looked to take the Beetle right off the top, its head came clean out the water but again It just did not stick and came free. It was a lot of fun though for an hour, though I cannot tell a lie, at times there may have been some swearing.
For the last hour or so I went on a bit of a wander as I worked my way back to the car and nailed a third fish, a nice Rainbow, from the long platform by the bridge on an Orange bodied Deer Hair Daddy. It wasn’t the fish I was targetting funnily enough, I had spotted another but the ‘bow seemed eager to oblige and slammed the fly.
So three for the day, not easy fishing by any means though the weather was pretty much perfect for it and I left happy.
