fishydreams

I guess that the Scottish rugby supporters might have felt they were in for a long afternoon on Saturday. The All Blacks were in Murrayfield and Scotland, like Ireland, has never beaten them.

This game was on the telly and I figured I might squeeze in an hour or so on the river before kick off and, if the fishing was good, I could even give the game a miss. In the end I caught the second half, not because the fishing was slow, but because the daylight gave out on me.

We have had a bit of rain recently and I didn´t know if the river might be carrying too much colour to fish well. Sure enough it was a little coloured and the level had risen just enough to open up shallows in the margins for the carp to explore. They were in and among the plants that had, only a week ago, been ankle deep.

These carp were spooky and I couldn´t get close enough to get a shot at one but, thankfully, the barbel were obligingly holding in steady current of the main river and I managed to fool a couple.

On Sunday I returned to the river full of optimism. It was a beautiful day and everything felt good. There was a moment when I sat down on the stones to get a pebble out of my boot and re-tie my leader. The wind was playing in the scrub and the air carried the sounds of the unseen river. There was not a soul to be seen. There never is. Sometimes we can forget how lucky we are and it takes a moment like this one to remind us.

The fish didn´t want anything much to do with me. If my soul needed soothing they decided to leave that to the sun and the wind and the river sounds. They didn´t want to have anything to do with it!

The barbel seem to have vacated some of the “reliable” water at the tail of a long pool which I could have put money on just a fortnight ago. And the fish in the shallows would not move to anything I showed them. But who cares? I was having a hell of a day.

In end I caught one fish. It took a nymph in the confused water where the current at the inlet to the pool struck a rock face and was angled downstream. The fish were not sitting in the shallow current where they often hold. Again, I would have put money on them being there. Only the bulge of water displaced by a turning fish suggested where to drift the little nymph. The fish headed immediately downstream and did its best to hang me up in snags but I managed in the end to get the better of it and was delighted to finally ease it into the shallows to be unhooked and released.

Another afternoon on the river. Here are a couple of horses just chilling.

This barbel was one of two that were taken on Saturday in the last hour of daylight. This isn´t much of a photo but it does show the  curious light blue “eyebrows” they seem to have in many photographs. I guess it is due to the way the eyes reflect light.