…and how not to do it
It’s been a fishing desert so far this year so far, between weather, on-call obligations and more weather, but by mid-week last week things appeared to be turning marginally milder. However, I have to say it snowed here on Saturday and was still a bit nippy when I was out during the daytime. Sunday was scheduled to be another River Annan open day and John and I were on the list for a second crack at the Annan this winter. Would it be more fish-filled than the last time? To be fair when you go to tackle the upper river you aren’t expecting bag fulls of fish, your biggest hope is to have an encounter with one of the lunkers that hang around at the top of the river. On the day we never touched a thing, but some fish were caught further downstream and one name that came up was Dryfeholm, another beat I have zero knowledge of.
The drive down to Johnstonebridge was grim. It rained moderately heavily as I left Stirling then turned to grey wet all-encompassing wetness the entire run down to the southern end of the country. Passing Beattock it was so wet I was certain the river would be up in the fields and the day would be off. The conditions had been as bad around the Upper Clyde so to be honest, having that as a plan B was a non-starter as well. But while it was still great and damp at Johnstonebridge there was no significant rain to speak of.
One of the beats on offer was Dryfeholm and having had a quick roll and bacon and a cup of tea John and I headed out to locate the beat. I doubt I would have found it without the directions offered, and it was a bit like driving through the battle-scarred landscape of Ukraine trying to avoid potholes the size of shell craters at times.
My initial thought as I approached the river bank was that the water was coloured but once right on the side of the river it was pretty evident it was gin clear, and the water moved down the plain at a good rate of knots, over an even looking pebbly bottom. Perfect for the Grayling.
The two of us started fishing and the water conditions appeared ideal, I think we both had a degree of confidence that a good day’s fishing was at hand. As ever with the Annan the depth varies quite a bit across the width of the river, sometimes the near bank was knee deep and you were well up to your waist approaching the far side. Then 2 metres downstream it was entirely the opposite. The flow was also quite a bit faster than it looked. As the bottom was such easy wading, it was never a problem, you never had that sensation of rolling downstream over marbles, but turning into the flow to move upstream while not impossible was very very hard work and you couldn’t fish upstream in any meaningful fashion for long. We had fished for a good hour without any signs of fish and covered a good distance and area of water. The sky remained leaden but at least the rain stayed off, though now and again a wind got up that made line control difficult and was very cold on your hands. But we were staying dry….until.
A spot of Freestyle
I had covered all I could, and had moved into the water already covered by John so was thinking to make my way further downstream for more of an exploration. By now there were two other anglers just down from us, one trotting maggots and the other fly fishing. Where I was fishing was waist deep and the flow was too hard to turn in, so I decided to edge back to the shallows backwards and when the water depth got to where it was easier to turn I pivoted to face the bank. But my wading staff which was attached to my wading belt had managed to get between my legs and as I went to put one foot in front of the other, suddenly realised I couldn’t as I was tripping over the wading stick, and I couldn’t stop myself doing a lovely swan dive into the river….Ok, it wasn’t that elegant, more of a front crawl unsynchronized splash fest. I realised I was falling and I hoped the water was shallow enough to catch myself on my knees…but alas it wasn’t and I took a brief ducking up to about halfway up my chest, just above the top of my waders, and that was enough to trigger my life preserver and so now not only was I trying to regain my footing but had a fully inflated bag of CO2 trying to float me as well….if anything this made things harder to “self right” in the circumstances. I found my feet though and as soon as I stood up realised some water had got into the top of my waders, I had wet sleeves, and yes the pocket in my jacket seem to be fully waterproof, as nothing was leaking out the bottom, I had to stoop and pour the water out of both breast pockets onto the bank. All my flies were soaked.
In actuality but for the front of my fleece shirt and the sleeves on a technical body warmer thing I have, I was dry. It was the wet sleeves that were the real nuisance, so I decided rather than get too cold to head back to the car, try to dry the jacket sleeves off, get rid of the inflated life preserver and dry my flies off. I had a spare fleece in the car- in fact, I have an entire change of clothing just in case of (rare) events like this. This is only my third soaking in about 12 years. I fell once in Wales and one other soaking was kind of self-inflicted in that I never fell in, but had to jump into water deeper than my waders in order to net a huge grayling, again on the Annan. So mustn’t grumble really. Back at the car, I ran the engine with the heater on full and my jacket sleeves and fly boxes were all dried out in 20 minutes while I had a cup of tea. I was already starting to head back to the water when John called me to say he was too cold and needed to come back for a heat himself so in the end we decided just to have a lunch break before heading back to the water by which time all my gear was totally dried out.
After some soup I headed further downstream, the other anglers I passed had not had anything on the maggots or flies, and John went back in initially where we had been before but then he went upstream much further. The wading was more of the same downstream and I covered a good area of water but again never had so much as a touch. I had to change the weight of the flies a couple of times to keep ticking bottom but other than that it was pretty steady conditions. I went about as far as I could to where it seemed to shallow up and so the choice was to head back upstream or go much further down the river and explore further.
In the end, I opted to head back upstream. The day remained grey and dank and in fact, if you asked me what time it was, I couldn’t even speculate as the light varied not one jot from 9 am when we arrived to 4 pm as it got near to time to leave. I located John about 100metres above where we had initially started in the morning and he told me he had fished all the way from the top of the beat down and had literally just had two small grayling in one slightly deeper hole in front of him just before I got to him. John asked me if I would make his fish look bigger than it was so I am only too happy to oblige. He carried on down until the water got too shallow to fish again and I had a go myself around where John had been but again had nothing….
So a big fat blank again for me and John had two fish that I promised I would make look bigger on my blog for him.
