Up the River ( Carron) Down the Burn ( House)

In a similar vein to last weeks blog I had a very similar weekend. With the notion of trying to recce more areas of water that I really do not know. On Saturday my nosiness took me upstream on the River Carron.

My normal fishing range on the river tends to start just below Larbert Viaduct as my bottom limit, and up to just after the M80 motorway bridge at the upper limit. The bottom limit was kind of imposed as I never knew where you could get parked and geared up down there, and the upper limit was because , well, fundamentally Carron Glen looks all but impassible in many places due to its steep sides. That and I really wasn’t that sure where the upper limit of permitted fishing actually was!

The upper boundary is apparently a place called Auchenlillian Waterspout. Google it, or look on the OS maps and I cannot find anything with such a name and so can only assume it is a local name. I was told it was “up by Topps Farm”. Topps Farm is quite a long way up the River, not far short of Carron Bridge ( well at least Topps Park) is.

Thus, on Saturday I decided to take myself up-river and try to see if I could find any spots that might be worthy of casting a line once in season. I had had a good look on the OS map first and noticed a road out of Dunipace that appeared to take you up the north side of the river and looked like it potentially brought you near to the top of the glen from that side. However, I found this was a bit of a dead end, as you arrive at a Farmyard with a closed gate. I got talking to one of the guys that worked on the farm and he told me that it was very steep up this side and you could only get up the marked route using a tractor after the farm. So that idea got the Kybosh.

I had noticed a footpath though on the road up, and finding a place to park the car, I made my way on foot into the Glan from the North bank. This came in about half a mile or so downstream from Fankerton Bridge. I took it steady and explored a few spots and got talking to another chap, who like me was out with a camera but who knew the Glen well, his motivation was Mountainbiking. I got some useful info so headed upstream on my quest.

Out of season chancers.

The walk took me about 2 miles or so until I could go no further on the north bank. Had I been in waders I dare say I could have crossed over the river in places and made my way further still , but that is something that can wait for lower water and actual fishing. On this occasion, I saw enough. I did also “observe” that out of season or not it appears there are those who don’t respect the closed season.

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What is wrong with some folk?

I saw smoke rising in one secluded spot just before the boundary of the wildlife reserve, and a dog came after me before being shouted back by its owner. Why he had a fire I could only guess at that stage, on a winter’s afternoon up there, and my guess led me to suspect he was fishing. Where he was located I couldn’t clearly see, but on my way back later on, he had gone and I took a look. The remnants of his (what appeared to be) disposable BBQ had been “disposed of”, i.e. left on the river bank, and there was fishing line lying there too. What is wrong with some folk?

Further up there were more signs of fires and folk leaving their Buckfast bottles and crap behind. Normally I carry a poly-bag with me ( when fishing) to pick up litter but I had nothing with me this time so it is still there.

Anyway, a useful walk and I now have a better picture of the river, though frankly I am still none the wiser where Auchenlillian waterspout is!

The river is a lot more over grown and the bare winter tree’s probably give more of an impression of openness than is truely deserved. I think it will be “challenging”.

A very short outing to Burnhouse

Sunday and I was kind of ambivalent about fishing. The rain looked kind of “on for the day” but the forecast suggested otherwise. I hoped the slight breeze might mean it might clear in the afternoon. I decided around lunchtime to take a run down to Burnhouse at Allandale.

By the time I was south of Stirling services the sun was shining and there was no sign it had rained at all, the ground was bone dry. What wasn’t so obvious though was the wind. A horribly swirly gusty mess of moving air. Even as I arrived at Burnhouse it wasn’t immediately apparent. I went into the lodge and got a ticket. I thought it would be open until about 6pm after all it is light now, until then, near enough, but nope, they still close at 4pm. That was a blow, I only had a couple of hours fishing! In the event, I am kind of glad, as the wind made it very, very difficult and while Burnhouse isn’t what anyone could ever call a “clear water” fishery, it was particularly murky on Sunday. I was finding many of my flies were coming out the water a sort of brown tint to them such was the suspended silt in the water, I can only assume from recent rains washing down the inflowing burn.

In my experience though it rarely affects the fishing and like anywhere it is just a matter of finding where they might be sitting. The wind though rendered 50% of the lochan un-fishable, there was no way you could cast from the North side.

Broken off

Starting at the lodge end on my fourth cast I had a really hard take and lifted into it. I felt like I had a good grip on the fish, then it decided to run. I felt a sharp jarring tug and then slack. At first I thought, the knot had pulled on my fly but no, the leader had snapped below the top dropper where my leader stepped down from 8lb to 6lb. Damn!

I tied on a new leader, and initially tried three flies but I soon realised this was just going to be a knot-fest in the wind so cut things back to two. Right until almost the end of my two hours I never had so much as a touch again until as I retreived my line onto my reel, I saw something wriggling on the water. I kneeled down to have a look , it was like a small midge trapped in its own shuck as it tried to hatch off. Just then there was a swirl, and clearly a fish had taken my point fly lying hard on the bottom, but as I wasn’t holding the line I never touched it and it bolted.

One of those days, I was actually glad the fishing ended at 4pm as I felt battered by the wind- and the fish, and was glad to be heading home for once!