Regarding the new fly only rule on a Sunday – today was bliss – sure at the stretch we were fishing you do not usually meet anyone anyway – however once the Salmon start coming into the river I think the rule will start coming into its own – once more guys start fishing for Salmon we trout anglers need a bit of respite and peace for the gentler side of the sport.
#grin#
Anyway – at last the Kelvin has started fishing properly – there were flies on the water and more importantly rising trout – not just in the slow stretches but in the riffles as well.
I caught my first trout in the above pool – it is long and slow with spooky trout – my fishing buddy was being bothered by the smolt run (they take anything) however I was fairly certain my rising fish were in fact trout – I was correct.
I had to be as accurate as possible – casting as close to the brickwork as possible – the fly had to be within a few inches of the brickwork for the trout to even consider the fly – it was the same with all the trout in the slow water accuracy was definitely the key…
It took an olive comparadun – it was nice being accurate with the fly and watching it drift down to the zone where I knew it would be in the trout’s vision.
I caught a couple from the slow stretch and then moved on frog jumping pools with my fishing buddy – he was using a dry and dropper and was doing very well..
I have fished a few rivers where the members have somewhere nice to retire to when the fishing is poor – sometimes they are lovely chalets with running water and other times they are just garden huts – what do we get on the Kelvin..
That’s right – a couple of park benches (paid for by my council tax no doubt) dragged into the undergrowth and surrounded by empty booze bottles and plastic bags.
Fantastic – it makes my day seeing stuff like this in the middle of one of our most beautiful parks – I mean it really makes overseas anglers want to fish here when they know what kind of facilities we can provide for them. I am reminded of an email from a chap who used to read my blog – he was an airline pilot and finally got the chance to fish the Kelvin – “For the love of God think of the children” (I am paraphrasing a bit) “first cast I was up to my waist in fanny pads and shit”
Ok – he was maybe exaggerating a bit however how do we expect people to look after the water quality when people treat it as a dumping ground or a drinking den – I mean I am sure this little den was created as it is in a lovely place – why then do they then try and go out there way to ruin it?
Anyway – I caught several trout on dries – and loved fishing a riffle where I had to roll cast my leader to a rising trout..
The riffle was lovely – it was what I had been waiting for all year – a rising trout in a riffle – they are always super eager as they have recovered from spawning to be fit enough to stay in some faster water.
I pricked more than I landed and for one trout I wished I had a net – it was certainly a little bigger than the rest however was lost at my hand – my fishing buddy was going to take my picture but it was gone as I brought it to hand.
A lovely session on the Kelvin – looking forward to my next already.
Good to hear you were also catching today Alistair.Fished from Killermount bridge up to Balmundy bridge had 4 trout to the dry fly best was 1lb. It felt stuffed with all the fly life about. Must remember to my take camera as two of the trout were a lovely golden brown best looking trout I’ve seen for a while. As you say smolts every were.Never seen anybody else fishing this stretch.
Nice to see the fish are rising. Strange how the place is so trashed. Any ideas how you can get people not to, fine the he’ll out of them and make sure you enforce it, then get the buggers that did it to clean the crap up? Maybe there’s a way to fond out who did it and then trash their front lawns as an example. (wink)
It’s not as bad as Italy though where you see the toilet paper floating in the near by trees from the spring flooding.
I noticed quite a few plastic shopping bags in the photo. In Ireland they’ve banned the damn things because they were showing up everwhere once the wind picked them up.
Chuck
Sorry, I typed the last message from my cell phone and just read all the mistakes. Cell phone typing + fatty fingers = …. Well you get the picture.
I was gonna suggest the post title be “ATTACK OF THE SMOLTS” but I guess “new seating area” will do, and probably less likely to attract sci-fi fans to the site.
Really nice afternoon fishing though, great to see fish feeding regularly. It was also good to see so many smolts and wish them well on their amazing journey!
Hey Jim – we need to meet up for a fish soon, I would have thought with the river being so low it would have been hard going up there?
Chuck – Just upstream of the benches is the famous “sanitary towel” pool due to the large amount of fanny pads in the trees – they come from Glasgow Uni seemingly.
Alex – you were attacked by smolts the buggers kept well clear of me – must be my massive flies – couldnae get em’ in there mooths!