The weather was for high winds, heavy showers and low temps. Feck all that lets go to the river of shit pipes on Sunday I said to myself on the Saturday as I was starting to feel real withdrawal from fishing. Usually at this time of the year we can choose to not go fishing however finding the times to hit it right has been getting difficult.
I managed to convince a couple of fishing buddies to come along to the shit pipe river (so called because of all the weird pipes and sewage in the river) and the game was on.
Alex was first up seeing as how he was driving so he fished the first pool – one I knew would produce a fish. He fished his dry and dropper and first cast almost the dry plummeted down and a nice fat brownie came to his net..
First fish from the banker pool!
I managed the 2nd trout however after a quick splash on the surface it was gone. I was pretty gutted as it looked a fair old size from my high vantage point however we had only been their a few mins so reckoned it could only get better.
Jim then had a bash with no joy and we started walking down the river. The temp at around 1pm was around 8 degrees, the wind had not materialized and the rain was non existent - nice one BBC Weather!
We walked up the river, the same thoughts went through our heads as we walked along – bandit country!
Its a dead sheep next to a giant cage – what the fuck?
We speculated whether the dead sheep had anything to do with the giant cage next to it. The cage was empty, Jim remembers seeing something about a guy catching crows on the telly however on closer inspection the mystery was not solved. The smell of the dead sheep was pretty horrible, was it bait for something? Some monster that feeds off dead sheep next to a sewage and polluted river?
We fished on!
Fishing this wee river gets even more difficult later on in the year as the leaves start growing on the trees. It is tricky enough as it is.
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Oh, even though the fishing was difficult we still all managed to pick up trout. There was the odd time I cursed the branches that would make casting and fishing a nice looking wee pool impossible and I considered bringing a saw with me next time to take away a few branches. Nothing crazy, just a few of the branches that made fishing a pool impossible. I suspect I have thought about this before and would probably do it if I fished here very often. The problem is sometimes this river runs a milky color which makes the trout unresponsive. I have had SEPA out investigating however they could not come up with an answer as to what it was.
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The trout were not easy won. I felt as if I was spending the afternoon changing from a dry and dropper to a dry. When I spotted a rising trout I would then have to take off my dry and dropper for a proper olive imitation – the trout would then bugger off or I would get my fly caught in a tree.
An Olive.
The river is not wide however has pool after riffle after pool.
When we stopped at a pool we would scan it for risers before hitting it with a nymph.
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There are of course some sections that are quite easy to fish.
My most enjoyable trout was to the dry, it was rising close in to a bridge. I covered it a few times and I missed it once. It took the 2nd time and it was a corker of a fish.
“Sit there for a hero shot”
A great afternoons sport, I ignored the two chaps with the beachcasters who strolled past. Possibly on their way to check their cage to see if they had caught anything in it.
