Is there fish in their Dad?
I hope so, I said.
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The squadrons were depleted in last year’s campaign of trout hunting by various means. Lost in action they were – up trees, on boulders, very occasionally in fish, sometimes on shopping trolleys and on one memorable occasion on the back of my jacket. Brings a tear to a glass eye that would – those little lads flying through the air – their mission to sit proudly on the surface of the water in a perfect imitation of a spiky insect. Occasionally (of course) they must dive underwater and imitate some kind of nymph – the danger for the boys makes me shiver at night, the thought of them hooking a boulder or shopping trolley, however the joy they feel when their training and camouflage fool some wily trout is really something to behold.
However, a full year has almost past since the first initial training of the troops from the Academy of Vice – sure there has been reinforcements as the campaign has progressed however these have been in dribs and drabs as time allows. Sadly, now the troops are weary, there ranks depleted – they look at the gaps in their ranks where their fallen comrades once stood proudly with there wing posts ready to be ginked and are crestfallen…
Like I say, it was sad during the season seeing my boys coming out of combat. however they are brave lads…I can only imagine what they face in their watery combat with some hungry trout – those big lips full of sharp teeth ready to rip and tear..
I try not to think about the boys that tempt Pike – maybe one day I will feel strong enough to talk about em’ The Sergeant from the Academy of Vice is battle weary and due to a rather rash buy unable to clamp properly on to a new kitchen table to prepare and train more troops (thanks to the Supreme Commander) The Sergeant decided it was time to let a young one take over, one that was up to the task of rotary techniques
Merely standing easy – ready to stand to attention at the first hint of trouble – he now has a companion to share the burden – a comrade in arms if you will. A new recruit from the United States has arrived – a place where they insist on calling the Academy of Vice the Academy of Vise – over here we understand the nature of fly tying – it is a vice – like an addiction!
End of Current Dispatch – More to Follow! Tale end of last summer I headed to a local Sea Loch with Alex and had a ball. We were fishing off a ledge into deep water and picking up wrasse and pollock. Later on we would move to an area that had thorn back rays however what sticks out in my mind is the amount of wrasse that I caught in one deep wee spot. It felt like every cast I was pulling up wrasse, in fact it probably was. Here is a wee selection of them..  A lovely green tinge…  Orange and green tinge…  Orange tinge… Been doing a lot of thinking back over the last few days actually. I finally found an old pal from school on Facebook. He had moved to where I grew up from Dundee and lived across the street from me. I was the first person to befriend him in school. He loved UB40 (not the new stuff he would moan, the old stuff) and would talk about his hate of fireworks due to the waste of cash. He was a wee guy and confident, nobody would mess with him and his strong Dundee accent never left him. I guessed he made up a lot of stories about his life back in Dundee but I enjoyed hearing them anyway. We would hang out smoking and drinking and eventually he got mixed up in a rougher crowd. We remained friends and we would run into each other and still chat away. The last time I met him it was when I worked in the Arches nightclub and he was totally wasted. He sat down to chill out with me as many people did at the time and we chatted for a bit, he disclosed he was gay and was struggling a bit with it. That was the last time we chatted. I finally tracked him down before Christmas and sent him a message on Facebook, no response. I tried again last week and sent one of his family members a message asking if he was still on Facebook. She got back to me a day or so later to say that he had been found dead last Thursday. He had moved back to Dundee and it looks like he got himself mixed up in heroin, there has been a spate of deaths over the last few weeks and he may have been a victim of it. I need to get my old UB40 album out! I am a member of a few fishing groups on Facebook and I look on with envious eyes at their permanent fly tying stations they have in their houses. I look at great wee cabinets that could be converted into a permanent tying station and placed somewhere so that if the fancy takes me I can be at it in seconds. I did in fact buy a house with an extra room with this in mind. Instead we had a lovely third child and my dedicated fishing cupboard is taken up by toys. My tying station pretty much looks like this:  Tying Station I had dreams of buying a proper dedicated fishing car however my fishing car is our ex- family car that I have just noticed has a horrific oil leak – you know it must be bad when your neighbor is a mechanic and he phones you to say he has never seen the like before!
I appear to be collecting an ever-growing list of fishing related activities that I am unable to take part in due to having to sustain an equilibrium between work, family and fishing commitments. As you can imagine the fishing part is probably the lightest out of the three. It does not help after moving to the river trout desert that is Helensburgh. One thing to strike off my list is writing my piece for the Kelvin newsletter which has been penned and sent off to the secretary for his perusal. Next step – get the vice out!  No swimming!
I decided I needed a new pair of wading boots at the start of the season. I discovered I had some cash on my Glasgow Angling Centre card so decided that the time was right to splash out. So I bought myself a pair of Scierra X-Tech CC6 wading boots with felt soles and then stuck them in my fishing cupboard and promptly forgot about them as one of my youngest children’s clothes wardrobe was stuck in front of the door which made access difficult.  Mine were felt soles… Also, I was doing quite a bit of fishing in the salt as well as walking up a hill so did not want to ruin them. I mean I could still get another couple of seasons out my old boots right?  Still get a couple of seasons out of these bad boys? I mean the soles are coming off and their is a 4 inch tear down the side of them however they are not entirely unusable. Anyway, I decided to get my new Scierra X-Tech CC6 wading boots out as I was fishing in my wee burn and had a session in the Kelvin. Both times they were great on my feet, so comfy and the support felt very good. Traction on the rocks was good……I am not going to keep going as I ended up returning them as when I took them off I noticed weird red stuff all over my wading booties. Their was a red layer of what I think was supposed to be rubber that had disintegrated.  Disintegration. Bloody typical I thought to myself and looked to twitter to find out what Scierra thought, nae twitter that I could find easily. I then found the Scierrra flying fishing facebook page. I posted my picture of the boots to their page but guess what? They only want pictures of positive stuff not actually sorting out problems. I decided to just dive in to the Glasgow Angling Centre and decided to see what they would say – it was Pike angling extraordinaire Dougie Loughridge who agreed their was an issue and gave me a credit note whilst refusing to touch the boots as they were still wet. I had not even thought of the chances of cross contamination but I guess they can not be too careful. I managed to negotiate a quick discount on the Greys Strata CT wading boots using google, I found them for £50 however due to my stupid hobbit feet being larger than size 7 I could not get them at that price. When I started hunting around they gave me them a ten spot off as obviously me fannying about on my phone was the last thing they wanted to deal with. Anyway, all is well that ends well and Top Service from the Glasgow Angling Centre! Took a walk up a hill to my local Dam for the evening. Fished anti clockwise however found them spooky. The wind was blowing down up the water for a change and I lost a couple within the first 20 mins and then finally one came to the hand.  To the hand… I got to the top (bottom?) of the water and the trout that were rising were spooked by my wading. They are not usually that spooky and I decided that it was because usually I walk round the opposite way and coming in this way I was displacing more water when getting into the water. I caught a nice trout and then after taking a wee step forward in the peaty water found myself slipping down what felt like a slide under the water and was up to my armpits, managed to crawl out but was soaked through. Was decidedly disgruntled but fished on without another touch for a half hour.  Up to my armpits.. I think it was because of the water but I now noticed the cold wind. I got to the Dam wall after a few plucks and pulls without any fully committing and I changed my fly to a heavy wee bead head. I decided to fish 20m by casting out and letting it sink and slowly twitching it back. I had a couple of savage takes that did not commit and then on my final couple of casts one stayed on.  Nice… It was good to see. Drove home and then still soaking wet I had to deal with a wasp nest that was under my roof tiles right above where my wife parks the car and the kids get their bikes. Good night! |
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