I have no idea why we always wait until the last couple of weeks to get together however on a very cold and frosty morning we decided to hit Carron dam for some float tube action.
The drive down was very enjoyable – the temp hovered around 1 degree the whole journey from my house and the car was dipping in and out the mist as I drove through a couple of valleys to get to the starting point.
The temp was up around 6 degrees by the time we got in the tubes – I think at one point during the day it hit double figures. I got sunburn.
I am always amazed at how ungainly you are when actually getting in the water with a tube and then how graceful you glide along with your enormous fins. As we were preparing to enter we disturbed a civilian who was just waking up from a nights camping – it turned out there was a half dozen guys in that wee 2 man tent.
It reminded me of the time I disturbed some guys on Lomond who were “Pike fishing” – 6 rods rods out and they were still half drunk – one was wearing a pink dress, turned out it was his stag.
Lots of plucks and pulls ended up with one trout for me – duly chapped as it was a stocky and is now in my freezer.
I fished back to where I started as there was now a good wave and had a few more plucks. Paul was long gone – his enormous fins propelling him up the reservoir so far in the distance I coul dnot see him.
Alex and I got out the water, stuffed the tubes in the cars and bolted up to the top of the reservoir and dived back in.
There was an interesting bit of water which was all bubbly – obviously we did not tube past the markers but we did cast into the maelstrom – interestingly my intermediate after a minute would be pointing straight down.
We found out the reason why after we were packing up.
Negative buoyancy apparently – not a big fan of being sucked down into the depths of a reservoir so I am glad we did not stray too close.
I headed back to find Paul – typically he had caught half a dozen trout whilst we had caught nothing.
