Micro trout and midge madness

Two trips, one to a local burn with work buddy to catch micro trout and one to Highland river to be destroyed by the midge.

We fished a few pools as their was a nice amount of water in wee burn. We fished fish about and we had a lot of interest from every pool.

This burn has never fished as well since the parkie told me that some guy had killed a load of trout for Pike bait. They are/were pretty easy to catch so probably a lot more fun than going to tesco.

2nd trip was a crazy dash up to my Highland River to meet Paul, I promised him Salmon and enormous rising trout. When I finally arrived after several mishaps he was throwing metal for salmon.  He was also wearing a net on his head.

Turns out the midgies were out in full force making changing flies an absolute nightmare as you had to stop moving for a few mins. Even with the midge net on the bites on our hands were driving us crazy.

The fishing was poor for the fly however Paul caught some good trout on the metal which does not count. I managed one small trout which did not even stick around for a photo.

Conditions seemed ideal, warm and overcast with a good amount of cloud cover. Their was plenty of water in this wee spate stream as well. I have no idea why the trout were not responding. Even as the sun set the trout did not respond.

My hands continued to be bitten as I rummaged through my fly boxes for a specific pattern, the memory of those agonizing extra seconds was enough to make me reorganise my fly boxes when I got home. They were in a sorry state and I could hardly find a half decent fly.

I removed all flies and gathered together all “spare” flies around my gear. I then organised them into

• Ordinary flies – Emergers, klinks, comparaduns, paraloops in fairly large sizes 16 and up.
• Nymphs and streamers – I carry a few black wooly buggers just in case.
• Micro flies – 18 and smaller, one was so small that my breath blew it on to my carpet and it was gone.

Once completed I found that all I was really needing was some high riding dries to suspend nymphs and some nymphs. Not bad for someone that has hardly tied a fly in total anger for a few years.

So this week the vice comes out and I am in business again!