Monday 21 May 2018

An odd day

Yesterday was a bit strange.  Bright sunshine in the morning meant we all packed suncream and were looking forward to a picnic lunch.  By the time lunch came, it was pouring with rain accompanied by a cold upstream wind.  Almost as soon as everyone had eaten their rather soggy quiche, it brightened up again to lead to a lovely afternoon.

Joan G with one of 3 she landed yesterday
I am not sure if that is why catches felt a bit flat all day but I doubt it helped.  At Middle they landed 53 fish for the day with catches fairly evenly spread although Julian T was perhaps the standout rod with 8 from Upper Fortress and Beach. 

Regular blog readers will know that we have a very hard working rod at Middle and he had 18 for the day which is perhaps the best indication of the run of fish that we have this year.

Graham J on the Mall - despite dropping water it is still a high river
At Kitza I know that they landed 14 for their first full day of the season.  Whilst communications are improving daily here on the tundra, I still could barely make out what Ollie was saying and so I don’t know the breakdown of that or how far upstream they were fishing – details for this evenings catch up I hope.
Jim A who may just have enjoyed his day...
At Lower we totaled 24 for the day with Graham J the top rod with 6.  I know that sounds pretty good fishing to 8 rods but in truth, I thought we would catch more than that.  Water temperatures are now at 10 degrees and my suspicion is that a lot of fish are running the middle of the river which we can’t quite reach yet. 

Marc W on Heli
This is a week which is normally hosted by Michael Evans and he always reckoned that there were always a few days when the river hadn’t quite dropped enough for the fishermen but had for the fish – it would seem that yesterday was one of those days.

However, as I am typing I have just seen Sue C land a fish from Larder and as she said over the radio, “normal service is resumed”

Charlie White