Regular consumers of my inane drivel will know that I’ve been moaning about the weather and fishing conditions lately.

Today I arrived at the fishery at 8am and thought to myself “YES!”

And it wasn’t my answer to the kind offer of a delicious looking bacon buttie, my body now being a temple!

No, the reason for my positive attitude was that I was convinced that conditions looked perfect; overcast, a hint of a wee breeze plenty of fish moving and tupping and the odd mayfly floating about.

Sure enough, anglers on both the bait pond and fly pond were into fish quite quickly. One fella of the fluff chucking persuasion had six fish on a black and green montana while a  popped up worm did the trick for the dookers.

It was all going to plan when the wind really picked up, we had a ‘smir’ of rain and that was it.

Fishing as we know it (or thought I knew) stopped.

Our brave anglers battled on however, throwing all sorts of tempting offers, at all sorts of depths but sadly in many cases it just wouldn’t work.

All the ponds were stocked three times during the day (including some really big fish ,as well as nice blue trout) in an attempt to get resident fish  into the mood but other than the odd one or two,  folk were struggling.

 And here’s the next curious thing. The folk catching were almost to a man, newbies to the sport!

Graham quite deservedly chuffed with his first fish on the fly

Graham McFall had his first ever fish on the fly and is now a confirmed fluff chucker.

His mate who was coaching him didn’t catch.

He didn’t take it too badly to be fair to him.

The Hilton men happy with a hard won fish

It was a similar story for the Hilton family.

 Please forgive the lack of first names – I’ve  lost the piece of paper with them on – please let me know, I’ll add them in and it’ll make me look less daft !

Mr Hilton junior was into a fish while his dad……well lets just say that he must have spent most of his time coaching his son.

There were many other cases of new anglers catching, but more experienced folk not. 

Peter didn't make his dad feel bad at all....and I'm sure he enjoyed the fresh air on the walk home.

 There was a really nice 6 3/4 lb rainbow caught by a man and woman who just dropped by, hired some rods and got tore in. Not too shabby eh?

 The only other photo I have however, is of a young man called Peter who caught a nice brace of fish on the fly, while his dad….yup you guessed it……joined the ranks of coachers!

I think it’s fair to say that most folk still enjoyed the challenge today though.

It’s a perverse thing I guess, but occasionally you do need to struggle to make the other ‘red letter day’s’ just that wee bit more special.

I hope you get the chance to visit soon, and if you’re new to trout fishing – apparently there’s no better time than right now!

As for the rest of you…..enjoy your coaching!

Tight lines

Paul