I missed a wee trip out that I had hoped to make on Wednesday and so Thursday after work I fancied a few hours fishing in compensation. We still have not had any rain so the rivers seem a bit of a waste of time unless you want to walk miles trying to find a puddle deep enough to hold fish then wait for some activity to spring forth. As I am going into an on call week I will likely be at Pendrich or Coulter at some point as I can come and go as it suits, so just went along to Swanswater in the full knowledge that it’s been very warm and it’s not going to fish well, but it’s out and it’s fresh air and the chance of a bend in the rod. The water was warm, like warm fish soup where the fish aren’t dead!
I just had a couple of hours on the Meadow Pond and really for two hours myself and another angler on there never had much action. There were fish cruising by and indeed short bursts of fish rising but the water was mirror flat calm for the most part and the troots were not for looking at a fly. I tried dries down to very small, I tried buzzers and small lures. And wee spiders fished just sub surface.
Playing a late session rainbow on a dry fly fished wet.
In the segment between 2100 and 2200 I managed to rise three fish but none of them connected with my dry. Then late on I was fishing a waterlogged olive F Fly back when a fish evidently made a half hearted lunge at it. I seen the disturbance behind the fly before I felt the nip. But again it didn’t connect. So I was letting my flies sink on retreive and fishing them wet. My last fly was a McPhails Emerger and again the fish never touched it dry but on my very, very last throw of the night, I started to pull it back and a fish took! The fish, a rainbow of about 2lb seemed initially quite lethargic and I had it’s head up and ready for the net almost right away, but I wanted to grab a quick photo, so once taken I just let it unhook itself from my barbless fly rather than net it as the water was very warm and getting a netted fish back would be hard on the fish.
Hard going but no one said it would be easy. And still better than watching the telly ( unless it’s The Walking Dead – which is nearly better than anything) . As I fished on the Meadow Pond earlier in the evening I noticed a lot of disturbance in the water, in the margins on the side facing the unused pond ( if you know Swanswater Fishery- there is a pond below the Meadow Pond that flows into the Sauchie Burn. ) As I was watching a Mink climbed out the Meadow Pond and stopped to look at me, it weighed me up for a minute then run over to the unused pond and vanished in the weeds. Not sure if it was getting any more sport than us anglers!
