Week beginning 4 November 2019
Monday 4th November. A dry start but it soon turned to rain. 3’0” on the Lees gauge and very murky. Stuart Andrews and team here for the week. I’ll introduce you to the other characters of the team as they start to catch a fish or two. The rain turned heavy by lunchtime and looking at the gauges tonight I see some of the gauges rising, it is 9.00pm as I’m writing this and the gauges are showing last reading at 5.45pm which doesn’t really help guess work on heights for tomorrow but I know it’ll not be great.
Tuesday 5th November. Well it’s not great today, in fact it’s a lot worse, that heavy rain has put the river up to 5’0” on the gauge this morning and the colour of milky coffee, so no fishing today. The lads arrived and had a look at the bits and bobs going past and decided to pop down to Chatton lakes and have a go at catching a trout or two. It’ll not be much lower tomorrow as I checked the gauge at 4.00pm and it was still 4’9”.
Wednesday 6th November. Another day ruined by high coloured water. 3’7” and coloured but at least dropping so we should get on tomorrow. Yesterday the team went down to Chatton trout fishery and Stuart Andrew was the lucky boy getting a 10lb rainbow which is now on its way to the smokers. Catches were very low on the river with 1 at the yair, 1 at Lower Pavilion and 1 surprisingly at lower north wark.
Thursday 7th November. What a horrible day it was with heavy prolonged showers and a very strong north east wind which was filling the Temple full of leaves. 3’0” and 42 degrees with a grey murkiness to it. Team Andrews were keen to be on the water having been here for three days without a cast, so off we went, we had two boats out on the Temple which was the days only saving grace as at least we were out of the wind, the other two rods had to have a cast at the Lower Cauld which was not so pleasant, one pull this afternoon up in the ledges was all the action for the day and I think we were lucky to have that. The scores across the websites amounted to two fish for the day, one from Lower North wark just above us which was a large coloured hen caught in the thin water up in the willows Calum tells me, the other was up at Glenormiston, so about 50 miles between fish. Lots of kelts about according to reports I’ve heard. We need another 10 fish to get to 300 for the season; I think we are going to fall some way short. It’ll be better tomorrow, at least the weather will.
Friday 8th November. Well the weather was better but the river was still at 3’0” but dirty, we gave it a bit of a go but it was just going through the motions, highlight of the day was the otter performing for the rods in front of the hut for most of the day. No fish reported across the websites today, although 3 seatrout were caught at Traquair and I bet they were beauties at this late stage of the season. Hard frost tonight so it might drop it in a bit and clear it for tomorrow.
Saturday 9th November. White over with frost this morning, Lees gauge reading 2’8” and 38 degrees and a wee bit murky. The lads fished hard all day but the only success was for Phillip who had a fish which tipped the scales at an impressive one pound five ounces. Phillip caught it with his first cast of the morning at the very top of the ledges and it really wanted the fly as it was right down its throat, luckily it was a fresh fish so wasn’t wasted as Phillip will be having it for his tea. The catches across the river were abysmal with only 4 fish being reported. So a very difficult week for Stuart Andrew and team, its not often the river stays so big for so long and with very few fish about you have to be very very lucky to catchfind one. Another frost tonight then rain snow coming in on Sunday night from the west. Still not long now and it’ll all be over.
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