Not so much an attack more a leisurely stroll

So last weekend Alex, Mike and I headed up North for a little camping adventure.

Alex and I travelled by train through to Edinburgh where we met Mike and then shot up to the River Tummel for the first leg of the adventure. When we arrived at the Tummel an angler came up to us and told us to make way for guys fishing Salmon, he then proceeded to boast that he had caught a 1.5lb trout on his salmon spinner and decided to leave it on the bank for some of “you trout boys” Needless to say it was eaten by an otter. He seemed quite proud of this and we watched as he skillfully cast out his giant flashy lure seeking for a salmon, I vowed to keep out of his way although not for the reasons he thought.

We had a pretty good day on the river, we each caught a few trout, this is a picture of me looking like a gigantic bug (my other glasses make me look sexy, these make me look like a giant bee).

Conditions were pretty good and by the end of the day we were all ready to tackle 3.5lb wild brown trout on the Don. Towards the end of the day there were plenty of trout rising but we could not work out what they were rising to. Mike took this trout on the old faithfull a Dirty Duster..

We got kinda worried on the way up as it started to rain, and I mean real mans rain, pouring out the sky like someone pouring water out of a bucket. Good news though as when we got to Aberdeen it had not been raining. We went to be dreaming of stalking giant trout on the dry fly. In fact when Mike spoke of tactics it was all stalking with creeping up on giant lazy trout sipping down up winged flies. Half a bottle of single malt whiskey helped those thoughts along rather nicely if the truth be told.

Little did we know that the entire Don would offer up after a day of coldness (not to mention a sore head) was a scabby 6oz trout, and this was after trying small cdc F flies, parachutes, wet flies and finally Mike tried a woolly bugger fished down stream. We couldn’t believe we did not actually just fluke a trout. Well, we did in fact catch a lot of par…

At one point we came across a phone box which thinking back we all got overly exited about and happilly snapped pictures of it….

So then it was the mighty Tay on the Sunday, another cold day. It was a cold morning and Alex did not want to hatch from his nymph like sleeping bag, kind reminded me of the Don actually 🙂

When we arrived there was a really nice hatch going down but as I was so exited I somehow managed to mess everything up. Alex managed a few nice trout though. I almost blanked if it was not for a flukey nice brownie at almost home time that then decided to do a Long Distance Release, by this point I was not too bothered about catching fish. To be honest I think we were all just enjoying the fact that we were outside and not cooped up in some air conditioned building..

All in all a rather superb few days away, it just goes to show that you don’t actually have to catch lots of trout to have a great fishing trip. On our way back home Alex made a suggestion for a fly with a rather unusual ingredient. It makes pretty good sense and once I have harvested the necessary ingredient from a friend of a friend I shall post the results here.