Over the weekend the level dropped and the water cleared. But it was cold and windy, with the surface of the quieter pools, such as Boat Pool and Willows, ruffled by the wind. During the morning not much happened despite the efforts of our local team of three rods covering all the major pools. During the afternoon the sun came out and the air temperature rose appreciably. Fish were seen, both kelts and fresh fish, including a big one in Tollmuir Pool. Then in mid afternoon Derek had a beauty from the very tail of Indies Pool: a 2SW fish in prime condition, indicating that wherever it had been feeding at sea had a plentiful supply of prey species, probably somewhere in the western Atlantic Ocean, west of the Irminger Sea.
Then, late in the afternoon, Derek Strachan had another fish, this time a 10lbs one from Pheasantry. We don’t think of this pool as a place to catch a spring salmon. Although it is a beautiful streamy pool, ideal for a sea trout at dusk or a grilse at dawn, we have (it seems wrongly) assumed that it lacks depth to hold fish in the lower water temperatures of March and April. I suspect the pool has been scoured and, as Bill Currie might have said, there are lots of “pots, scallops and scrapes” where the fish can lie untroubled by the force of the flow.
So, what started as a rather bleak early April day, ended with two more fish on the books, bringing the FCW total to date to 12. Here is another picture of the Pheasantry fish during the process of bringing it to the net.
Postscript. I walked down Milton Beat at dawn today and noted that the river had risen during the night. There is possibly some residual snow in the high corries. For Finavon this is an ideal scenario, with cold and clean water pouring off the hill to bring the fish into the river, but not too quickly, so they pause in the ‘plateaus’ between the streams of FCW. I hope to record more fish later today because the conditions are excellent. Sadly I will not be fishing myself, but I wish our local team ‘tight lines’.
TA on 5 April 2011