Week beginning 4 September 2023
Monday 4th September. Team Godden here for the week and this is how fickle salmon fishing can be, last week 20 odd fish and good conditions this week out pops the sun and not a touch today despite there being a few fish on the beat. Last year on their week they had 6 fish landed in the sunshine and off the gauge heights, the following week following a rise of water over the weekend the next teams got 106, your sometimes better being lucky than good. There were fish in most of the pools mostly grilse but fish all the same, we chucked a mix of flies from #12 to big collies and sunrays, the skimmer also got to have a swim today but apart from a couple of wee trout no other pulls were had.
Tuesday 5th September. The sun came out today and it was wall to wall blue skies, Gene Godden beat the odds getting a fresh fish from learmouth stream, sadly it only weighed 3lbs at most so not much of a scrap on a big rod. That was the only pull of the day, 1’0” and 58 degrees.
Wednesday 6th September. I could just cut and paste yesterdays report apart from who caught the fish, Mike Wood caught a 5lber from learmouth stream this afternoon but it was an older fish. It was a misty start but by mid morning the sun had burnt off the cloud and it was blue skies and hot. All this sunshine has put the water temp back up to 60f this morning and weed has started to lift off the river bed and become a pest on the hook and line. Catches were very low today with only 2 fish being reported by 7.00pm one of them ours. A lot of rods I imagine will be having an evening cast rather than cooking in the sun. We hardly saw the sun in July or August and now there’s too much.
Thursday 7th September. Well the sun didn’t shine today but it was very humid, water temp this morning was 60f and 10” on the gauge. Gene in the cauld was getting weed or slime on his hook every cast and it wasn’t long before he’d had enough and retired to the hut for a coffee. Toby and Mike who’d been out early returned to the hut saying they’d both seen plenty fish in the glide and learmouth but no pulls and lots of weed. Lunchtime the team went off for a pub lunch and on their return decided they’d had enough of the weed and the prospect of another two days taking weed off the hook was too much so they sadly headed for home.
Friday 8th September. A misty start until around 11.00am then out came the sun and it was hot. I had planned to get a bit of strimming done but I couldn’t get the bloody strimmer to start, nearly gave myself a hernia pulling that cord. West learmouth had 3 fish today Paul said it looked like the lad was nymphing, I suppose fishing that way you are not casting across the stream and having weed and slime slide down the line to the hook, you are coming with the flow on a short line. I met a lad who was fishing at Milne Graden and he was cursing the weed but said there were a good few fish down there but nothing fresh. As I was having a break from trying to start the strimmer there were hundreds and hundreds of gulls flying from east to west, they looked like black headed gulls going by the size, I didn’t know they migrated but maybe they do, they were certainly flying with a purpose. Another hot day forecast tomorrow, what we need now is either a flood or a frost.
Saturday 9th September. Another hot sunny day in fact the hottest day of the week, the left side of the cauld is now dry so that’s about 9 inch on the gauge. I took a walk down to Coldstream Bridge and there were a good number of fish above and below almost all grilse but the odd bigger one as well. Only one fish reported caught on the river today.
Sunday 10th September. Very humid this morning, the cheery weathergirl tells me that there is a high chance of thunderstorms this afternoon/evening, I hope so as I’ve just been down to the river and there is a lot of weed and slime coming down.
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©M Campbell 2023
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