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| Fish On! |
At last August saw some fresh water entering the rivers which certainly helped to drop the water temperatures and encourage a few salmon to accept our offerings. However there was a short spell at the end of last month and the beginning of this, when there was a significant amount of fish stacking up in the lower river, but whilst temperatures remained high they were simply ignoring our flies altogether. The up side to this was at least you knew you were fishing over fish, and when you were getting comments like" I have never seen as many fish in a single pool before", then at least things did become a little more exciting.
"When we did eventually get some water there were spells of action with fish lost and fish caught on the fly".
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| 1 of 2 on the day for Brian. |
The fish in question however have now moved on from these lower reaches following the recent rain we received and will hopefully by now be well distributed throughout the river, but before they moved on we did manage some success, with a few anglers connecting with a few of these fish.
With the river now dropping in again we will hopefully see some fresher (more aggressive) fish entering the system and once again building up in numbers ready to offer us some further excitement, especially around the tidal stretches of the river and hopefully they will be more willing to oblige.
The Sea Trout fishing didn't really materialise in any significant way this year and although there were fish caught, numbers of fish were definitely down. This is not necessarily down to lack of fish, but is most certainly associated once again with the high water temperatures and the stress this can cause the fish themselves, often causing a lack of interest in our offerings and when they do get the urge can often result in very tentative and missable takes, unlike the aggressive takes we like to encounter when these fish are very comfortable in their environment. So if you didn't manage to get out in June / July to indulge in a bit of night fishing, don't worry as you didn't miss much at all.
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| A nice Brown coming to the net. |
It was good to see the Brown Trout fishing eventually improve too following the input of some fresh water. This gave us more options when fishing for them, other than just nymph fishing in pocket water.
There has also been a few better browns grabbing the salmon flies of late, which is always a good sign that they have woken up a bit, unfortunately they are usually the sort of fish you would like to encounter on much lighter tackle.
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| A Casting Demo at the Lowther Show. |
The Lowther Show was a great success again this year especially given the mixed weather we had over the weekend, but it was nice enough to bring people out to watch our demonstrations and get involved in the casting tuition and competitions available on the fishing island. It was good to meet new faces and catch up with familiar ones too!
I am hoping September and October will throw up some better salmon fishing this year, given that conditions were against us when we should have been having positive results, although I guess we will be at the mercy of the weather again if this is to be the case.
