A good way to recover after being ill? Part 2

So where was I?

Right, so on the Sunday we decided to make a proper day of it. My wife was working, Emmanuelle’s girlfriend was in Italy with their baby and Alex’s was away for the weekend to Edinburgh. So we did what any right minded male gents without a care in the world (other than my coughing) would do and went to the pub for a meal and then to the Glasgow Angling Centre. We had to pick up some little LED lights because of falling everywhere the night before (nothing to do with the heaby jeebies in the dark…I just don’t like cows ok!!). We found them a little too expensive in the GAC so headed down to Maplins and picked some up there; I managed to grab the last fancy one that wrapped around your head but to be fair I just know the old ball n chain will be taking it off me to go to the loo when we camp.

So we then headed back to the river in good time, the two guys caught a fair few fish but for me it just did not seem to work, I caught a few smaller ones but just did seem to be getting the same takes as last night. Just before dusk we moved to a new stretch of river that did not look fished, well we had to jump over an electric fence (I was not happy) and then as there was no paths in the grass Emmanuelle fell into a giant nettle bush.

Emmanuelle fished down stream and once I came to a funny long pull I noticed some fish rising. Well, I waited all that time for one to come along and then caught two the night before and low and behold I caught another grayling, this one was a little larger than the others and I started to get a very good feeling about this pool. I cast again as I thought there might be a shoal of them as I could spot a couple of rises….

I watched my olive klink drift down and suddenly it disappeared, now it did not look like anything had actually taken it, it just was sucked under the surface “hello- I thought- I have heard of things like this before” so I struck…this all happened in a split second…I struck into a lovely brown trout…as I was still thinking of grayling I think I called out “what the fuck is that?” as all I could see was a massive tail turning over in the water, what followed was then one of the most memorable fights with a trout I have had in a long time, a couple of leaps out the water, swimming up and down and around, taking line….ah the joy- all this in around two foot of water as well Alex walked up to net the trout for me and in the walky talky said”hey Emmanuelle, Alistair has caught himself a right clunker”…he replied “Big grayling, big trout what the hell is going on up there”

Weighed in at one pound and 10oz.