Happy Highland Calamity

I had two options when driving to the river, go up and over a railway track which would involve possible death if I fannied up getting over in time or through a small tight tunnel which went under the track. Obviously to save 3 mins I decided on the quick option of staying in the car and not opening any gates.

As you can tell from the photo this was my first trip out as a 40 year old and it looked like I was going to have the same old problems as I experienced in my 30s – total disregard for sensible solutions to problems !

The day was warm, I think it topped 16 degrees on the drive to the river and it was slightly cloudy. It was also very bright. Because of all this I was hoping to maybe snag a couple of trout on the nymph as Alex had tied me up a few for my birthday however I was not feeling too optimistic after the tunnel fiasco.

The river was low and crystal clear, there was a lovely long deep pool at the start of the beat and I was looking forward to giving it a bash however there was two young guys with rucksacks peering into the water and I knew they had spooked it. As I walked up I heard a huge splash behind me and it turned out the boys had stripped off and jumped into the water. It looked a bit cold to me however at least I now know how deep the pool is.

I walked up the river and first tried a dry and dropper in a pool that I had fished up to last time without so much as a sniff. It is weird walking up a river that is totally crystal clear; I wondered how many trout I was spooking and kept as far back from the water’s edge as I could. Seeing as how I have never fished this far up before, turning every corner was interesting as I did not know what I would find. luckily what I found was long shallow sections with usually a deep pool at the top.

I started to pick up trout on the dropper and then after losing it on a rock kept catching trout on the dry. From one pool I managed two brace of nice trout probably just shy of a pound and a dozen smaller trout. The pools are all fairly similar in that they shelf off quickly into deeper water.

As I positioned myself at the bottom of a long pool I noticed the two young guys walking right up the side of the opposite bank peering into the water, they bid good day and I politely asked them if they would mind walking back from the pool, they obliged but the damage was done and the pool produced nothing despite it looking great.

As I walked up the river I found another long slow pool, you could see every pebble on the bed of the river and also a rising trout on the far bank. I slowly got myself into position feeling that I was going to spook it, I watched it take another fly from the surface and this time its fin broke the surface, it was like a nature film. I cast my fly which I felt just looked out of place with its long thick looking tippet and amazingly I watched the trout move towards it and take it without any hesitation – drag was not a problem as the water was so even across the river. It was again a lovely trout!

It was around this time that I realised that my trusty old snips had fallen off. I felt I had walked as far as I could anyway so decided to head back down the river scanning for them as I went. Maybe I should spend more time looking at the bank of the river as I found a hoof just where I head been fishing earlier.

As I walked back to my car I realised that it did not actually feel like a bad walk. The day was still warmish however because I was walking downstream I think the trout were spooked in every pool even though I tried my best to stay back from the edge.

After missing a couple of trout at the pool where the guys had been jumping in I disturbed a couple of young lovers.

You would have thought that I would have got back to the car to find the scratches to have softened slightly after such a good days fishing. You would in fact be totally wrong, they were in fact a harsh rip across an otherwise lovely day!

My snips were nowhere to be found either!