After some back breaking work on the Kelvin putting a bridge across a ditch * I found I had a spare couple of hours to fish the Kelvin.
I arrived at a spot I have only ever glanced at as I hurried past towards other pools however while I have been out for a run I have spotted some trout rising in the area so decided to give it a bash.
As soon as I arrived at the river side I noticed a few rises, it turned out that they were silver smolts heading out to sea. It took me a further five mins before I located some actual trout in the most tricky of places.
It was a tricky cast upstream and I had to allow my line to lay across some river debris (you can see it on the right hand side of the photo). The debris in this area is pretty bad and the banks are made up of rubble,weird bits of metal pole that stick out the ground, heavily rusted shopping trolleys, invasive plants and broken glass – not nice !
Also because the water was a bit murky I could not see the bottom which was a bit dodgy!
Out of that water I landed two and lost a couple, essentially I just felt their weight and they were gone.
I moved up to the top of the pool and thought it would be a good time to try a nymph on a dropper – it was one of the nymphs that I had been sent the other day (it is now stuck on a tree so a good job he sent me a few) and with the first cast a I was into a lovely rod bender which after a brief tussle was placed back in the water!
It was just where you would expect a bigger trout to take station, right at the top of the pool in between two tongues of water – there was really no mistaking the pull of the dry under the water for anything else. I thought I might have got another trout from the pool however nothing showed up at all.
I spent some more time trying to tempt some wily trout with a downstream drift however they were having absolutely none of it with my shenanigans.
I showed the pictures to some teenage girls who couldn’t believe there were fish in the river, they giggled as the touched the camera as if they were touching the fish themselves.
As I wandered under the Kelvin Aqueduct I wondered about the tons of water and stone above my head. The Aqueduct carries the Forth and Clyde Canal over the River Kelvin. It is 400 feet (120 m) long and 70 feet (21 m) high, and when opened in 1790 was Britain’s largest. It is protected as a category A listed building.
Not many people see this view…
At around 3pm(ish) I called it a day, as I wandered back up the path some guy pointed out his drunk girlfriend who was peeing in the bushes – he was holding a bottle of wine and he informed me of the many good pools he had seen on his wander up the river.
I wished him well on his travels.
* That I took photos of.
As you say Alistair this bit of the river gets a look but it does looks a good spot. A good tidying up with a 360deg excavator to get ride of some of the rubbish in this part of the river(wish list).
Went back up to the bridge to lay the felt on the sleepers and had some good sport at this part of the river. Spoke to a lad who had been working his way up the river and had seen quite a few trout rising.
The breeze dropped the water went flat calm then a very large number of olives started to come off the water and all hell broke loose. You could not count the amount of trout that started to rise. The lad I had spoken to was up stream of me having the same problem as myself. Cast a dry fly out trout takes it then shakes its head and its off. Recast to another trout same again the two of us just looked at each other in astonishment it was unbelievable the amount of trout that were in this stretch of the river. After about 5 to 10min it was all over but it was a great sight to see.