Week beginning 22 August 2022
Monday 22nd August. That’s me back after a bit of a break, one week on holiday at the start of August followed by two weeks with covid which was not a pleasant experience. Nothing much changed since I was last here, still no water and full of weed. Graeme Hogg here for two days, he lasted about 45 minutes in the rain taking weed off the fly every cast, Mike Kemeny fared no better and was offski at noon. It rained all morning with a couple of heavy pulses but it has done nothing to the levels. The Holland brothers Paul and Karl decided not to travel which was the right decision.
Tuesday 23rd August. Another day ruined by floating weed and algae coming down the river, it was also very humid which made things worse. Mike came for a look had a coffee and decided not to bother fishing.
Wednesday 24th August. A little bit of light rain this morning and humid. The ever present weed was all over the line and hooks even though Mike had changed to a single silver stoat to try and keep the hook clean. Both Mike and Sally gave up at lunchtime and took themselves off to do a bit of sightseeing. What was nice to see this morning was two coveys of grey partridge one of about 9 and the other must have been 14 strong, what wasn’t so nice to see was a flock of cormorants numbering 11; it’s usually late August September when they start to reappear.
Thursday 25th August. An overcast warm day with the gauge showing nothing as it’s out of the water, temp was 61 degrees this morning with a lot of algae and weed on the move. Christopher Scott and James Aird joined us today but by lunchtime James had had enough of taking weed off the fly and line and headed home Christopher had a wee cast in the cauld after lunch to scratch that itch but soon gave up due to the weed. Mike and Sally also gave up at lunchtime but not before Mike had an impromptu swim in the Cauld. I have to say fish are scarce at the moment, you see the odd one but there were far more showing in July even in all that heat, they must be stuck to the bottom or they have maybe buggered off back downstream.
Friday 26th August. Another overcast day and a bit humid. The river was up around 7 inch at the Lees, a combination of the freshet and 2 or 3 inch that came down the Tweed, it rendered it unfishable, even the keenest rod would have to admit defeat today. Walking the dogs this evening the far side of the Cauld is dry again but the weed problem is still there.
Saturday 27th August. Another warm day with the river back down to zero on the gauge after the freshet had run through. Mark Clarfelt was keen to have a go sort of scratch the itch. We popped on a #10 single silver stoat and went down to Learmouth stream, the weed was still about but nothing like yesterday and with the wee single you could flick it off during the cast and keep the fly clean. Amazingly Mark had two fish landed, lost two and had another two pulls, the landed fish were 3lbs and 4lbs, the 3lber being almost clean but the 4lber was a very old fish.
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©M Campbell 2022
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