Trout at Last..

All this sea fishing and Salmon fishing has been fun – I am expecting a few more sessions like that before the season is gone. I may well go after Salmon again this week with both the dreaded spinning rod and the fly rod however today I needed to do what I love most – catch trout on the dry fly.

It feels like ages it really does – I had some nice late night sessions on the Kelvin around a month ago however the drought then really hit us and it made fishing pretty difficult. It has now been a good old fashioned Scottish summer (raining) for over a week now and the rivers are replenished with fresh water and oxygen – the only problem is we have a little too much water to contend with – the Kelvin is out of action for trout as it is running a bit too high for them and the Clyde is just a tad too far away to check at short notice.

Anyhoo – today I had a few hours spare between finishing work and home time so decided to hit a wee burn I know within a half hour of the city – it was a bit of a gamble as it has been raining overnight and there was every possibility it was going to be a muddy mess – turned out it was just perfect.

It is a peaty wee burn and it was full to the brim – any higher and it would have been impossible to fish however I could see on the rocks how high it had been and how much water had actually ran off it.

This was not easy fishing – and not for the fainthearted – crawling over huge boulders and gingerly nudging into pools only to find them damn near bottomless – trying to get across the stream with a very powerful pressure shifting your feet – absolutely fantastic fun.

Oh yea – the fishing – it was pretty shit hot actually – I did not notice any flies on the water however some upwings were generally buzzing about the place – I did not even bother trying to identify them I just stuck on a usual deer hair comparadun and went for it. When that got lost in a tree I tied on a deer hair emerger and it seemed to do the job the fish were not choosey.

What made life difficult was the casting – the stream is deep in its own wee private valley criss crossed with trees – trees that eat flies and make overhead casting impossible so it was a case of roll casting my way up the stream.  I think I have now located my favorite tippet material – for ages now I have been using Fly Rite Inc Dilly Wax on all my dry flies as a dubbing wax – I then use it as a floatant on the fly when I am fishing – this magical stuff can also be used on your leader to help it float although to be honest I do not bother. It turns out that Fly Rite Inc also make tippet material – and oh boy if I liked there Dilly Wax I now love their tippet material – it is lovely and limp – I was using some 6x Suppleized mono and I was mightily impressed with its strength and the way it did not kink at all.

The picture above is where I caught around half a dozen of the trout – you can see the riffle at the top of the pool where all the trout enjoyed hanging out – there was around 4 inlets of water into the one big pool so dealing with the drag was a nice challenge – they posed a few problems – every now and then I would notice another trout rise in the faster water – I would then target it until I managed the drift correctly.

Of course there was no getting away from the inevitable car parts!

Every time I see one of these lovely wee trout I wonder how people manage to kill them – I mean sure out of sheer ceremony a wild trout every now and again is lovely however why do people insist on killing wild trout every time they go fishing.

I was using my Orvis Superfine today however I kinda wished I had taken my bamboo with me – still then it would not have been a spur of the moment session.