Brownlining the shit pipe!

Before I left the house I noticed that my felt sole was coming off my Orvis Wading boots – I think I have worn them a couple of dozen times and never in the salt so the fact the sole is hanging off is annoying. Not having any evostick I just used some glue I had kicking around and then used a couple of zip ties as a working patch until I could repair them properly. 

I have been planning to return to my shit pipe river for a couple of years now. In fact I had left my house with this intention one evening and headed to the Kelvin instead because I was held up for 45 minutes in a rather nasty crash on the A82. History almost repeated itself this time however I was determined to fish it even just for nostalgia’s sake. I wanted to find out if my many phone calls to SEPA about the white glow from this river has changed anything. 

It turns out not – although to be fair all the shit pipes which were rusty and dripping had now been replaced with shiny new red ones. It has been so long since I have been here that I also had to negotiate a different motorway layout, however it was a pleasant enough journey and only was late because of the tourist traffic on Loch Lomond.

Alex was there a while before me and had already banged out a few trout so I was keen to start. Even though there has been a lack of posts as of late I have still been fishing – trips to my local wee pond as well as to the Kelvin has been continuing however the thought of writing about them fills me with dread as I stare at a screen all day and the thought of doing it for a moment longer fills me with a feeling akin to nausea.

I pulled up next to his car and abandoned mine and strolled past the litter and discarded nerf guns that had been left around – those kids’ guns cost a fortune as well. I have no idea why kids would throw them away. However, this river is next to lots of houses which are at the top of a major embankment and sometimes it looks like behind the houses are used as a handy dump for any detritus that is too cumbersome to actually take to a recycling centre. 

Whilst sliding down into a pool I realised that there was some kind of outflow next to me – like a big stank. It was obvious that something had come out of it as the grass was pushed down and this was what I was sliding down on. It was full of small white bits – I should have chosen a different spot to slide down. 

The river is small with many pools and riffles – casting is technical, with lots of side, roll and helicopter casts. I only managed to get caught up in trees a  few times and really for next season I need to stock up on flies. I think I mentioned earlier that this river sometimes has an odd white glow to it – usually this means the trout will not play ball at all however on this day they did not seem to mind. Now that I think about it though the pools with the whitest glow did not produce any fish so maybe we just hit the right pools. 

We moved the cars a hundred yards or so and then worked our way up to an open field. As we got closer to some cows I again mentioned to Alex my fear of the blighters and he told me a story about walking through a field of bullocks. As usual the “cows” we were walking towards turned out to be bullocks and the buggers started to charge us kicking up their heels and not looking like they were going to stop. They were brave enough to keep walking towards us even when we were shouting at them so we retreated across the river. “This only happens when I am with you” Alex commented at one point. The beasts were in no hurry to move on and we tried shouting at them “Whoa Whoa…. Fuck off” At one point Alex picked up a stone and chucked it at the ground in front of one feet but it merely glared at him. Eventually they retreated and we hastily got behind a barbed wire fence – the beasts realised they couldn’t bother us anymore and wandered off. 

We were both using a dry and dropper pretty much all day – the trout did not seem picky. I lost a couple of trout on both dry and nymph.

It was getting late by this point and we decided to head to another river where Alex  had peered over a bridge and spooked a couple of trout – turned out that it looked like a long ditch in places however we stuck at it for a while before calling it a day – I moaned about my felt sole which had by this time burst through its patch. 

Compared to these rivers, the Kelvin is a pristine chalkstream. 

However, thanks to Brexit it is wee unloved post industrial rivers like this that are in danger of being wiped completely out due to the ongoing neverending problems caused by the blunder of the decade. Recently a decision has been made to pump sewage into rivers again – I wouldn’t hold your breath about any of these new allowances being repealed any time soon. The folk that voted for Brexit seemed to forget that those nasty European bureaucrats are the very ones that badgered our own self serving politicians into making us have nice things like clean rivers and no roaming charges and washing machines with a long warranty. 

SEWAGE that has not been properly cleaned has been allowed by the government to be dumped into rivers and the sea over Brexit disruption.

The UK’s chronic lorry driver shortage means some businesses have found it more difficult to get hold of water treatment chemicals because of supply chain disruption at ports blamed primarily on Britain leaving the EU.

In a regulatory position statement issued on Tuesday, the Environment Agency introduced a waiver that would mean some companies would not have to go through the third stage in the treatment of sewage if they did not have the right chemicals.

https://www.thenational.scot/news/19567722.brexit-sewage-can-dumped-rivers-sea-chemical-shortage/

Anyway, it was good being out again stretching the legs and the plans being made for next season was most enjoyable!

See you near the toilet!