I got to the river at around 0930 on Saturday which with hindsight a little optimistic as it was still quite chilly, there was no fly life and no fish moving. In fact I spent most of my time just sitting watching the water waiting for something to happen. When I got bored of that I experimented a little with using nymphs.
I have never been happy with the New Zealand style of fishing a nymph. What I was finding was that, yes, I was hooking fish but then I was finding that they would do a bolt into the weeds and because there was another trailing hook they would escape capture. The other thing I found was that thy would rise to the dry fly, fail to hook themselves as there was a bit of trailing mono and if they did hook themselves the trailing nymph would catch in the weeds again. All this added to the fact that I usually have enough trouble trying to keep my dry fly floating without a bloody big anchor dragging it down made me have a rethink about the system.
I remembered having a chat to Mike about this who recommended the use of a piece of sheep’s wool; this would act like an indicator as well as ensuring a nice drift. Looking around the field I was in there was only cows which are not known for their floating abilities so I had to come up with a more radical solution- well not that radical actually, as I had already bought some of this floating putty.
I had bought it primarily for the little box as I was going to fill it with flies and attach it to a lanyard around my neck; I just never got around to it. You use it by pulling off a little piece and then squeezing it around the line- it worksâ€so so†-probably slightly better than using a dry fly.
The river was very muddy and was up around 6 inches, I was surprised as the day before we had absolutely no rain, the day before that however we had a bit of a rainy day but I did not think enough to seriously colour the river.
The insect life started slowly, I watched a bee buzz past, and then noticed some of those cow pat flies buzzing around, then some butterflies and finally some olives. The trout were just not interested but I managed to sneak out some Grayling almost by chance.
I can feel the season coming to an end, which is strange as last year we had good sport right up to the last day of the season.
Alistair, i have had similar problems with the system in the past and have resorted to simply using a dry with a nymph or pair of spiders hanging beneath on a traditional dropper system, alternatively you could open the box of shame or use a bubble float!! I think we can still expect sport if we get some settleds weather between now and the dreaded last day, if not salmon should be in the Kelvin and Clyde system in numbers now and, given continued good water we should have sport. In other words if we get continued rain go for salmon, if we get setteld conditions the trout will still be caught as was the case last season. Also, the grayling will only improve with the onset of winter, plenty more fishing to be had !
hello there just to see where it is you are catching the grayling from is it the kelvin or river in that area. cheers
Hiya, it is not the Kelvin…..it is another river that I fish 🙂
Alistair
hi allister could you tell me of any place i could get bus or train to grayling fishing i stay in kirky and am new to sport thanx …jim
Will mail you about this later on today 🙂