With the majority of us getting this Monday off work, a friend and I went up to Ballater and fished the Gairn for trout. A river he has fished further up, but one that I was yet to tick off my list
.
The morning started off very cold (4°C air temp)! So we did wonder from the get go if the fish would be biting at all until the water warmed up a bit. The plan for me was to just swing wets most of the day and switch to a dry for any rising fish. Learning from my trip to strathdon last week, I kept it simple with just 10-12ft of flurocarbon and a single black pennel.
The river was up about 4" above normal I believe, and it was VERY peaty. Through the polarised glasses it was almost like red wine! There is a lot of tree cover on the lower section of the river, and not so much in the upper reaches - no matter though, even with the water flowing fast 90% of it is still easily waded other than a few really deep pools.
Anyway...some photos....
My pal had a few fish in the morning on the nymphs, but unfortunately none for me on the traditional wets
. I did come in to contact with a few but couldn't get them to stick! So we stopped for some scran, and made a plan for the afternoon. We headed up to the next section and quickly found a very nice looking deep pool at the bottom of a fast water section.
I tried my usual array of wets, and even stuck a heavy tungsten nymph on the point with a wet fly on the dropper to try and cover all depths too, but no joy.....until I saw a sly little rise along the foam line
. Switched over to a dry mayfly imitation, missed the first couple of takes, but got him in the end. A bonny wee peat stained broonie to the dry fly. Happy days
.
We carried on down the river, fishing various pools as we went, some deep, some shallow. My friend was picking up a few fish on the way with the nymphs (definitely the most productive method by far).
I hooked one other fish for the day a little further down, which ended up being the biggest of the day . By no means massive, but easily a full 1lb brownie. Unfortunatley I didn't manage to get a photo of it, as just as I had it in my hands it wriggled itself free and was off like a rocket. Thankfully my friend witnessed the whole thing - he may not have beleived my otherwise
haha.
Another good day had by all - and at £8 for a day ticket, it was well worth a visit
.
