As you will know if you have been round this site a wee while I do like to try explore places I haven’t fished before or return to places I have not been for a long time. I decided late yesterday afternoon to go give Morton Fishery a try over by Mid Calder. I will post a fishery review page shortly that will link here.
I was a bit late in getting my arse in gear, as I spent the afternoon editing Mondays wee video, it takes you as long ( longer really) to edit down footage than make it in the first place!
Once done I stepped outside to assess the weather conditions. I had mulled over visiting somewhere that had boats as I am a bit foot sore from Mondays ( extreme by my standards) exertions. Imagine my disappointment when I realised it was quite windy. My first thought had been the Black Loch up behind Falkirk but it has a rep for being hard in a wind. So that was scrubbed as an idea. So next on the never been visited list was Morton Fishery. It has I understood, boats, so was worth a shot, though it is a good hours drive at rush time so I had to get my skates on. I just flung all my still water gear in the boot and headed off.
It wasn’t hard to find up a fairly long single tracked road that reminded me of a long version of the access road up to Burnhouse. It is in a secluded wee spot in some woods and it looked that barring the “keeper” a chap called Dave there wasn’t a soul there. It turned out one boat was out but out my vision at this point and it returned as I was getting ready to load my boat. As I was talking to Dave I managed to snag his leader on a rod he had set up lying on the table. I hadn’t noticed his line, fortunately it had no hook on it but as I untangled myself from it, I couldn’t help notice it seemed pretty strong stuff. “Eight pound?” I asked, ” Yeah” said Dave, “when they take you, you need it otherwise you just get snapped off.”
I decided to take his advice and made up a three dropper cast of about 15 feet of 8lb G3 Sightfree fluorocarbon. I have been fishing 6lb or lighter a lot more recently so this seemed like a return to heavy stuff! Boat loaded, life vest donned, it was a beautiful evening for a row in a boat. Morton isn’t a big place so rowing even for a sack of aching bones like me isn’t too big a deal ( at least not in the conditions ) but the oars were a bit heavy and hard to manage at times and I was wishing I had thought to bring my electric outboard, it never crossed my mind as I was loading the car.
View of Morton from the boat on the West side looking east
