Dogs, Boats and Sexism

It was my birthday last week and I decided to visit my local pond and also to attack the Sea Trout at my wee bay. Sadly nothing came to the hand however I did feel a slight warmth in the air which filled me with some optimism for the coming weekend.

As I had an afternoon free today I decided to head to my highland stream to see if it had woken up yet and was glad that within a few mins of my arrival I spotted some trout slurping away at “something” on the surface. There was nearly double the amount of water in it from the last time I was here with Alex so things were looking good.

However, the spooky trout were certainly living up to their reputation in this river and I never really worked out what they were taking, sure I spotted some olives drifting past but the rises did not appear to correspond to their drifts. Plus there were as sporadic as anything.

Anyway, I had just arrived at a lovely pool with trout slurping when I heard a banging noise and a “Hello there” from down river. A girl of around 13 was trying to get a boat upstream using a single paddle. She jovially told me this as she whacked the oar in the water. “Sorry” she called out as she moved the boat pretty much all over the pool. As she couldn’t paddle the boat in the fast water she dragged it up the bank over the stones. I could see she wanted some help and wanted to have a conversation so wandered off upstream a bit to the next pool to get away from her. Same situation with slurping trout and then the girl was back. I walked downstream this time and found a pool with a rising trout. I waited a while and then slowly crawled up to the river only for a dulux paint dog to jump into the water. At least the owner had the good grace to apologise profusely. I walked back up to my banker pool to find that gladly the trout were back – I covered a few only to hear a loud bang upstream. The girl was back with her boat, I swear to goodness she was doing this on purpose. Turns out she could not get it up any further so decided to turn back.

This time I yomped it upriver, overtaking dog walking man to a lovely wee riffle with rising trout.

After a few casts finally a trout took my dry and it fought well above its weight.

I wandered downstream to my spooked pool where the trout were slurping again. As my fly drifted into some slack water I noticed how deep this pool actually was. Probably around 12 feet. I raised my rod and felt resistance, my first thought was that I had hooked the bottom however there was no chance of that because of the depth – the solid resistance moved a foot or so and my fly pinged back at me. I realised I had came into contact with a whumper and cursed my luck.

I wandered back down past the tied up boat and met some boys jumping into the river. I spoke to them briefly and then they pointed excitedly upstream – the girl in the boat was coming downstream. I laughed and asked the boys if they knew her – they told me that the girl was in fact a boy. But she has long blonde hair I told them – you are being sexist I was told as boys too can have long hair.

It was time to call it a day anyway.