Week beginning 15 May 2017
Monday 15th May. Rain! Rain at last but it’s nothing like enough, it’ll help the farmers but it’s not enough for the river. The Teviot has a couple of inches at the top gauge and that would be worst case scenario a brown Teviot and no Tweed to dilute it. 6” and 54 degrees still nice and clean. Team Germany here for the week but up to press no action today, they are going to have a cast this evening so the scoreboard might change. The usual fish were showing in the usual places but one clean/fresh fish was seen in Duddo this morning. Just back from the Lees and Martin Tewes was very pleased to tell me he’d had a 7lb fresh fish from the Glide and had also seen 5 others. Whilst I was in the Hut we had a visit from Dave Foreman who’d been fishing at Tweedhill today and had caught 3 to his rod making it 4 off the beat as well as seeing a good number of fish moving, that is good news, really do not want a brown Teviot tomorrow.
Tuesday 16th May. A really strong wind from the south west today which made casting a problem at the top of the beat, also the river was rising all day the result of yesterday’s rain. By mid afternoon fishing was all but over with floating weed and stone dirt in the water column running down the line to the fly. I popped back along tonight to have a look and it was reading 1’7” on the Lees gauge. There were 100s of Smolts going down so that’s a good result of the lift in water, it will speed up their progress to sea and away from any predators. Mark had a lovely trout of 2lb on a dry fly off the cobble point and Martin managed to get a boil off a fish in the Slap on a #8 Ally shrimp. So it’s all to play for tomorrow as long as the river doesn’t colour up as sometimes the colour comes a long time after the rise. All being well there should be some new fish on the beat tomorrow morning.
Wednesday 17th May. 1’8” 54 degrees and very beery, MartinTewes had a wee pull in Learmouth stream this morning and Carston had a fish boil at his fly in the Slap but no pull. There was the odd fish showing at the Iron Gate but in general they were keeping it a bit secret with very few showing. As the afternoon went on the colour got worse and even though team Germany fished as hard as anyone no more action was had. These wee rises are strange things as you get the height then hours later you get the colour. The Oystercatchers nest at the Middle stream was a casualty of the rise and was washed away but the one at the back of the wall has hatched two chicks, I hope they manage to avoid the crows now. I’m hoping the colour will be much improved tomorrow.
Thursday 18th May. A frustrating day today, the water was still carrying a fair beery colour but it was certainly fishable. 1’2” and 54 degrees with sunny spells. The first action was 3 boils at a sunray stripped just subsurface across the Slap, good boils but no hook up. Martin Tewes down at Cornhill bend hook a good sized fish that made off down through Duddo then decided to come back up into Duddo snagging the line in the process and pulling the hook out. So another blank day, a good few caught above us but only one below us, so it seems the fish went scooting past us yesterday. Mark was filming the little ducklings outside the hut this morning when all of a sudden it looked like a huge brown trout had risen for a fly but it wasn’t it was an otter. The otter appeared from nowhere and just like a big trout sooking down a mayfly it took the duckling down with hardly a ripple. Mark will send me the clip so I’ll post it on instagram when I get it.
Friday 19th May. Overcast day with the odd light shower. Peter was on the Slap and Cauld first thing and there were some fish showing in both places, sadly he never had a pull. Martin however down in Learmouth stream had more luck getting a liced 6lber which was lovely to see. There rest of the team fared no better than Peter so one was the total catch for the day. I took Carston up the Temple in the boat backing it up with a big sunray but the weed coming down in great globs was sliding down the line to the fly. The weed must be the result of weeks of drought and then warm water followed by a wee rise which dislodged it, whatever the cause it’s a bloody pest. Mark managed to get a hold of a nice Brown Trout in the glide on a #16 emerger and Carston did the same this evening. Sprouston were top dogs getting 6 today all on the fly Craig (Head Ghillie) tells me, so well done them. There’s a fair bit of rain forecast tonight so we’ll see what that brings.
Saturday 20th May. Bit of a wet morning and a wind blowing today. The rain last night didn’t do anything for the river and in fact it was back down to 10” on the Lees gauge. The lads covered all the likely spots but didn’t get a pull. Over all the catches were good again across the river with fish being caught from Middle Pavilion to Tweedhill. The forecast for next week is for it to get warm from mid week so that will not help things.
© M Campbell 2017
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