Winter – it is on its way…

So the season is ended and now thoughts have turned to other matters – fly tying, grayling and Pike, although not necessarily in that order.

Usually by the end of the season most people are quite glad for the rest but somehow this year I remain restless. The plans made last year only seem half completed although thinking back on the year many boxes were ticked. Sure, when I think about it I caught bigger trout than in any other year but for some reason I remained unfulfilled. I think I can only count a few times when I got to the river and witnessed a really good hatch of flies – I can count in my head half a dozen times when I purposely cast to rising trout – maybe it is just my memory playing tricks on me but I kept on waiting for something to start, you know?

Is the lack of fishing the Kelvin that has done this to me? Made me feel as if something has been missing? I kept on waiting for reasonable weather for evening sessions which never arrived, when there was some reasonable weather I was far too busy writing essays to even consider venturing to the river for a stolen few hours. Next year my work is intending for me to do a 6 month course which I have been told is pretty intense involving lots of evening and weekend work. Sounds reasonable for some maybe but these people don’t have a hard core trout fishing addiction. It is bad enough work has me Monday to Friday 9am – 5pm without it eating away on my spare time – yikes juggling that as well as husband duties it makes my blood run cold to think about the possibilities.

Anyway, to keep me occupied over the winter my little fly tying evening has once more resumed – led by the master caster Albert Laidlaw who now has his own website I see. The whole concept of guiding (rather than ghillieing ) has not really taken off in the UK – I am not sure why that is but I reckon over the next few years it will get bigger as the notion takes off. I reckon anyone coming from far away to fish one of our Scottish rivers and wants someone to guide them could not do better than enlisting the services of Alberto – that goes for casting instruction as well.

Grayling fishing has not really got into full swing for me yet, for some reason my thoughts have been centred on Pike. I have bought myself a new 8/9 weight to go after the toothy critters but at the moment I am attacking them with rattling plugs and a spinning rod (shock horror). There is something satisfying when at the end of a trout season when you have been casting dainty dries to fussy trout you pick up a 4 inch rattling pike plug and launch it in the general direction of where you think the pike may be holding – the key is to actually cause a disturbance rather than not create one.

Click, swoooooosh, SPLASH ! Ahhh – satisfying!