I think Mother Nature is playing a bit of a cruel trick on us anglers just now. I work from home and most of last week the sun shone and it was dry. That was until the weekend came round, again, and it rained overnight, again.
The rain was heavier I think than even I appreciated. The river apps showed a rapid rise in those that were of interest to me for the Grayling but there had obviously been a fair bit precipitation locally too. It was sunny and there was actually a tiny bit of heat in the air as I stepped out the house on Saturday morning, enough to cause the wet ground to emit clouds of mist.
I didn’t actually have much of a plan in any case, but my wife told me if I was going to head out Saturday looked better than Sunday. Until that time I wasn’t sure if I would even bother to fish, this weekend. So not to look a gift horse in the mouth, and as it was so still, decided to have a wee return trip over to Faughlin near Carronbridge.
It was actually a nice drive over with the sun peeping through the clouds and mist in the depressions between hills. It was a little greyer over there though and very flat calm, as it remained all day- mirror flat. There were a few anglers already fishing. Two were in a boat that was holding position right by the corner of the dam wall and they were clearly getting fish ( probably more pulls than actual netted fish, but they did get a few, including a big out of Season Brown about 5lb) from what appeared to be a pod of Rainbows sat hard up against the wall.
I had my first casts along the roadside bank but had no signs that anything was interested in my Goldie and two Diawl Bachs on an Intermediate line. The water was high. If I thought it was high looking on my last visit, it was higher still now and fairly coloured up though not dirty. The reservoir is fed by ( by my count) three burns so is going to get a lot of water in after a wet night. The water was fairly rushing over the spillway.
I moved round to the promontory, another angler was at the point so I tried my luck into the shallower bay in front of me. By now I was changing flies fairly regularly giving lots of patterns a swim. I managed to get my line in a bit of a knot between the reel and first ring on my rod, and stopped with the line still in the water in front of me, to unpick the loop that had formed lest I catch something and it jams in the rod ring.
Just as I got the tangle sorted I became aware that a fish had taken one of my static flies lying on the bottom and try as I might I could not get the slack in fast enough to hook the fish- though had I it would have been something of a fluke, let’s be honest!
It did make me think that static was maybe the way to go and I tried various means of fishing buzzers from dead slow on a floating line to, a rare thing for me, fishing three buzzers under a big bushy Stimulator dry fly- a four fly cast!
A recipe for tangles but on the whole, I had no real issues. I did though struggle to get any fish to look.
The “White Hate”, Worse Than the “Black Death”?
I was also getting a bit hassle of a few swans. There was one quite large Cygnet and two adults. The adults were harassing the Cygnet- likely it has overstayed its welcome, and the Cygnet, in turn, was constantly coming by me and hissing. I hate Swans, possibly more than Cormorants! Even when I moved right over the other side, the sodding things followed me! I have had this before up at Pendreich, the Swans make a B line for me then want me to move when I have moved away from them. I must be a Swan Magnet a target for their “white hate”
Elsewhere an older guy fishing over the same fish as the boat covered earlier did hook a couple right into the wall on a small black spider before he said activity dried up and despite a few moves myself I had not a touch all day even when covering the odd fish that rose in range in front of me on the far bank. Right at the end I had one follow with a big wake behind my fast stripped fly- at the dam wall, and that was the sum total of my sport really.
They were there just not interested and there were a few blanks it seemed- me amongst them. Jimmy reckoned the rain had brought a lot of feeding into the water and the fish were either preoccupied or full.
Just one of those days when it’s called fishing not catching!
