I made it out for a few hours on the River Carron on Tuesday evening. A strange sort of evening, over cast but not cold, always threatening to rain but never quite making it.
Now at first glance this might look out of focus but the hazy area in the middle of this image is actually literally zillions of midges that came off the water as it turned to twilight.
I sat and watched the water and there were quite a few fish moving but you could see for the most part ( all) they were tiddlers. I started in slower deep water that was clearer than I anticipated after recent rain, fishing a pair of nymphs, a fairly heavy #16 Olive Perdigon on the point and a #18 47 Nymph on the dropper. The point fly was too heavy and was getting to the bottom and instead of drifting along it just sat their like a ledgered weight! It came off and I put a lighter point fly on, a wee hares ear beaded pattern, and this fished better. All the way up to a section of deep faster water I never had a touch. It wasn’t until I was right at the top of the fastest water where really I wasn’t expecting anything that I seen the Indicator twitch and a barely perceptible knock indicated something had taken. Indeed a small, wild Brown of about 7″ or so in length, I got the leader to hand and the fish flicked itself off my barbless hook and dashed back to the fast water.
CDC Greenwells, a great wee general olive pattern and fishes wet or dry
Nothing else took so I moved up through the thin water to the next slow glide. I again observed before casting a line and I seen a few fish move again, but again feared they were all small. And so it was, I hooked a second on the Hares Ear smaller than the first. Further up a large pool had plenty of rise forms and as the evening wore on there were masses of midges providing ample feeding for the fish. I decided to swap to the dry fly and put on my conventional Double Taper tactical line and a CDC Greenwells. It’s a great wee fly, sits right on the surface film and always get some sort of attention, and you can fish it wet too. Almost right away I had a fish, another tiddler, and over the course of twenty minutes rose a few more and returned another one before retiring back down the river towards the car. I had a few casts downstream and on the swing was actually getting more interest than fishing the fly dry on the top. I had one pretty stiff pull but still think it was a small fish ( on a 3 weight rod it doesn’t take much to make an impression) and managed one more wee fish before I called it a night. Not sure where their Dad’s are though- failing to find them entirely this season.
