Charles Graves: a dedicated man!

When you talk about being a dedicated fly fisher you might think about getting out every few days or even every day (before kids) however Chuck Graves has taken this to an entirely new level.

Dedication is driving for hundreds of miles across Europe (after flying their from the States), under the English Channel and then another few hundred miles through England to end up in a hotel next to the Kelvin and then hit some tourist spots for the day with the wife and kid just so that you can fish the Kelvin for an evening.

Phew!

That my friend is what you call dedication – true dedication!

The only other time I have seen dedication like that is when last orders is called in a Glasgow pub!

I wanted the Kelvin to be in top form for Chuck and everything seemed to be going well during the day with fairly high temps around the 18-20 degree mark however there were storm clouds on the horizon and if I have learnt something over the years (that I promptly forget as who the hell wants to be a skeleton at a wedding) it is that a few days of shitty weather means the fishing the night before will be difficult.

And it was difficult, however we all still managed to winkle out trout and Chuck got to meet a couple of kelvin legends: Alasdair P & Jim Burns. I had walked down to the river earlier and watched Alasdair fishing the worm in the Big Blue (pool) when Stuart Hunter went to join him – I watched as Stuart strung up a rod which Alasdair told me was his brand spanking new salmon fly rod.

Of course Alasdair managed to snap it almost on the first cast and felt bloody awful about it.

We fished on up the river watching the occasional Yellow May flitter about however the big trout were being particularly belligerent and it did not help matters that I managed to catch a few trout before Chuck – some people might think this was skill when in actual fact it was sheer bloody luck!

We did a car dash to another part of the river before darkness came down as it may have been a tad more sheltered and were presented with several spooky trout – Chuck witnessed a monster leaping out the water before deciding that a couple of pints and a fishy chat in a local pub was the order of the day.

Chuck has been reading and commenting on the blog for several years now and noted that the pictures of the Kelvin trout have certainly got bigger this season – I did notice him checking my hands in case I have in fact shrunk however my non- tiny hands have been confirmed resulting in a definite rise in trout size.

Of course this session seems like an age away now as the river is now an unspeakably huge raging torrential mess which is only good for bringing in the  Salmon…

What this means is that when this rain stops the river will have a lovely clear out of all the junk, weed and other detritus and we should have some great fun in the  well  oxygenated water.

Bring it on!!