End of season round up
Seeing as some of you have been asking here’s a roundup of the 2012 season
Spring- Well what I can say about the spring, I’m not really a lover of early spring cold, flooded, blowing a gale, loads of Kelts and no Springer’s usually all in the same week but this year what a difference, low water and not too windy or cold and fish on the beat and big ones at that. The first fish of the year was caught on the 2nd of Feb from the Cauld and made 14lb with the height being 1’9” 36 Degs and squeaky clean which is about a perfect height for us. We ended February with an impressive 20 fish landed two of them making 18lbs a piece and they are bad to beat they look like pearls. March- was another good month with 28 landed 17 on fly and 11 on spinner the best a 20lber from the Glide on a #6 Willie Gunn treblewith 1’3” on thegauge and 46 degs. Only five of the fish were in single figures so the quality continued. The Osprey also joined us at the end of the month. April- Started well with the first fish in the book being a another 20lber from the Back of the Wall this time on a #8 treble, height 1’3”, with the sandmartins here in number now it made it feel like Spring was here, the first Swallows turned up on the 11th just in time to harvest the March Browns and Olives that were floating down in huge numbers but very few Trout to be seen rising to them. May- Started as April did with another 20lb fish in the book from the Back of the Wall again, and we were joined that week by the first of the Swifts on the 3rd it was a good first week with 9 landed followed by 11 the next week including another 20lb fish from the Back of the Wall yet again. Fish of the month, in fact fish of the spring goes to a cracking 25lber caught by Martin Tewes from, yes you know by now, the Back of the wall. That week was also memorable as a mini heatwave was on us for the week which made things very difficult to say the least. We ended the month with 29 in the book and 4 Seatrout; the river had been around the 1’6” mark for most of the month with little fluctuation which suit me just fine as you can get at all the pools although some of them need a wee bit more to pick the flow up a bit. June- Started slowly and never really picked up and on the 9th the rain arrived along with cold north east winds, and as we all know now the rain never stopped for the rest of the year, the whole month was just a succession of floods with cold dull days so best forgotten about. July- The pattern continued into July with the gauge never dropping below 2’9” in the first week and never below 3’6” on the second week and making 8’0”on the 12th, it did manage to drop back to 2’2” by the 28th, but the Lees summer rods are a hardy bunch and we had 43 for the month, the best of which was a fresh 25lber from Learmouth stream to Tony Brignall who was fishing from the Wheely Boat, helping to make it one of the best Julys on record. August- Tended to follow suit with a flood every week, not always a big one but a dirty wee rise, enough to put a lot of colour in and put the fish off for a day or two. After saying all that we still had 105 for August so no complaints with the best day being 23 on a mix of fly and x raps, there were some good sized fish caught during the month with plenty well into double figures. September- Things started to pick up a fair bit with 44 the first week and 60 landed for the second week, but these two weeks saw the only settled weeks of the Summer/Autumn, we even caught one or two on the Skimmer. Week three saw a 6’6” flood on the Friday and the following week was almost a write off apart from the Monday when 9 were caught, this was followed by 4 on Friday and 6 on Saturday with floods mid week. October- What a difference week makes 92 fish in five days, in fact 89 in four days, the fish were there in numbers even though the water was high they were in the mood to take. This was followed by 76 the next week in four days with a 6’0” plus flood ending the week on Friday. So we ended the month with a very respectable 269. The fish of the month in fact the fish of the year was a 23lb cock from the Back of the Wall caught by Nick Smith, it was the length of a 16lb fish but resembled a Tuna fish it was so fat and fit, it gave Nick a hell of a scrap well into the backing several times and he was giving it some stick. We were starting to think it might be a more traditional autumn with fish coming right to the end of the season, but. November- Fine if there are fish but it’s a long month if there are not. The fish didn’t want to stay on the Lees but pushed through us to the Wark beats who seemed to catch fish right up to the last day of the month, hardly a mile above us they were hauling them out while we were hardly seeing a thing. We started catching the odd Kelt in the first week of the month which is the earliest I’ve ever had a Kelt, and strangely enough the Kelts were cleaner than a lot of the fish showing in the pools that had yet to spawn. With more floods and a lack of fish the season shut itself down as is often the case. With 757 fish landed there are no complaints about numbers, a number of years ago that would be an unattainable figure and it’s amazing how quickly we get used to catching a lot of fish so it’s quite a reality check when the fish are scarce or not wanting to pull. I believe that 757 was the best score for a single beat but it all depends how you juggle the figures. We’ll be at it all again quicker than the bairns unwrap their Christmas presents and we’ll see what 2013 brings us.
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