Week beginning 5th November
Monday- started with a heavy frost but soon gave way to a lovely Autumn day with the river at 2’2” on the Lees gauge and water temp at 38 degs and squeaky clean, the trees along the temple bank in their last days of Autumn colour, only the Oaks having some green leaves on them but no Acorns same with the Sweet Chestnut and Beech so no food for the birds this winter. Anyway we set off looking for a good score but by lunchtime realised that things were not looking good with only three landed, by five o clock we had only added one more to the score and had not seen many more round the beat, I thought this might be due to the cold water and bright sun but looking at the scores at Wark and Birgham Dub it would seem the fish are moving up. Tuesday – A better day for fishing duller milder with a bit of a westerly wind Temple still poor but had two from the Slap and lost two in the Cauld, the back of the wall came good and gave up four and the Glide two along with a late morning Grilse from the tail of the Cauld, so nine for the morning this was followed up with another six in the afternoon, fifteen for the day and no complaints about that. The day ended with a rat hunt at Andrews house (they’ve had a unwelcome visitor last couple of days) the rat made a big mistake and ran into the box where the trap was set as we were checking it so it was a short hunt much to Jane’s relief, that’s the only wildlife story today.
Wednesday- Blowing a hoolie all day and a wee tinge of colour in the water partly from the wee rise in the Leader and also the wave action along the banks, anyway the lads did their best and thrashed away all day but only four fish hooked along with a Ghillie as Bruce got a hook in his cheek with a miss timed overhead cast (if you’ve got the wind behind you always Spey cast) Also had a Salmon Kelt today which is the earliest we’ve had one in the Autumn, we expect to get the odd one at the end of the month following a flood. Thursday- Calmer day thankfully water 44 degs and clean but only two fish both from the Cauld both liced. We expected more as its spot on but if they’re not there you can’t catch them, didn’t see many clean fish today but I see the Wark beats are getting them so the fish must be going straight through us. Friday- Good conditions with clean water temp 44 degs. Fished Learmouth stream with John Couglan and the place was stuffed with fish jumping over his line but nothing pulling the fly, we tried all sorts of lines and flies but to no avail. Francis Sidoli who normally sorts out a few had two from the Glide which was an improvement for him as he got nowt on Thursday. The cat that got the cream today was Ronald Campbell our Tweed foundation Spey casting champion who dragged himself away from his microscope for an afternoon and managed to find a tide liced six pound fish down the bottom of the beat well done Ronald, it must make a change to enjoy a bit of fishing instead of trying to find an answer to give to rods as to why the Salmon are not taking the flies. We ended the day with four but only one fresh. I see all the top gauges are rising tonight with four feet at Hawick so looks like a day at Kelso races tomorrow. Saturday- Might as well of gone to the races as nothing to show for a whole days fishing apart from a lot of leaves, the river was 2’9” with us and a very murky colour it was one of those days when you knew it wasn’t going to happen, at least the sun was shining, so we ended the week with 35 fish 16 of which were returned the best being 18lbs caught by Francis Sidoli, who as I write this will be in the Besom Inn at Coldstream to receive his trophy for the biggest fish of the week competition which this party always have, its presented during the Saturday night drinking competition. I hope the weather man is wrong but he’s usual right when it’s a bad forecast but next week is looking wet and windy. On the wildlife side not really much to report apart from our two young Otters who are there every day and always look like they are having a ball, they just seem to play all day.
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