Week beginning 11 August 2013

Monday 12th August. Back to normal life but what a week that was, 458 horses rode through the town and out to Flodden on Thursday, the whole area was in gridlocked for ages, and my laddie was at the front with the flag! 11” on the gauge and 56 degs, clean, not a lot about but James Henderson and his dad Graham covered the water and Graham was rewarded with a wee fresh Grilse in the afternoon from the Cauld. Tuesday 13th Off to the local health centre first thing as scratched my eye quite badly trying to get a contact lens out last night and thought it was still in so poked about some more, the nurse held my eye wide open, got her torch over my eye for a look after she had dyed it orange then the end fell off the torch right into my wide open eye, now I have to say it smarted more than a bit! Anyway no sign of the lens so now wearing a pair of old glasses which are not as good as the contacts. Fishing, 3 today 1@7lb Cauld, old fish and 2 from the Back of the Wall which were fresh but small, all on fly. Wednesday 14th 9” on the Lees gauge and 58 degs but clean very few fish showing and even less pulling the fly, the weather men are saying lots of rain from now through to Sunday and that is just what we need to get things going, eye still bloody sore. Onions are split to bits in polytunnel but the outside ones are doing fine and Clancy’s brood are getting big, on the Pumpkin front I had to make the difficult choice of cutting one off, as I have two on the plant and only want one so it gets huge, I cut off the one furthest from the roots and it weighed 40lb so it’s looking good on that front as the shows not till mid October. Thursday 15th Overcast humid day and the water temp up to 60 degs. Team Burgon here today and much to hubby Johns disgust Trish drew the wrong ball from the bag and they ended up at the bottom end of the beat, which gave the Slap a rest as regular readers will know. Anyway it turned out that the bottom end was the better as Trish had one at 3lbs after it started at 7lb and it took a while to beat her down to 3lb but threats of a serious tickle seemed to do the trick, not to be outdone John promptly hooked one in the very same place but his didn’t stick on. There were only another 4 fish reported off the whole river so a very quiet day, raining as I write this at 8.00pm with more to come. Friday 16th Eye feeling better now and I can see what’s going on. We lost a wee fish in the Cauld first thing and that was it for the day, there are a number of fish in Duddo and Cornhill Bend and we threw everything at them to no avail. But, late news Perry went down for a cast this evening and managed to get a 15lber from the Duddo which he returned
(it must of been really black!)
We really need a flood now as nothing is coming in and the weed is starting to build again. I did see one fresh fish in Cornhill bend, a wee grilse about 5lb but couldn’t tempt it, not even with a skimmer! Saturday 17th River up about 3 inch, still 60 degs and no pulls today, the same old fish splashing about. The rain that the weatherman talked about arrived along with a stiff wind but I fear that the wind pushed the rain through too fast as there is very little going on at the top end apart from a wee rise in the Ettrick.