Feeling tense? See the doctor.

After a fish free visit to Loch Skeen above the Grey Mare's Tail waterfall near Moffat in the Scottish Borders with Lillian at the weekend, I began working eight days straight on Monday. Fortunately this isn't normally something I have to do very often, but combined with a change in the weather I thought these circumstances might limit my fishing opportunities so I was feeling a little stressed out at the prospect of little to no fishing until midway through next week!

The Grey Mare's Tail water fall. The walk up the right hand side to Loch Skeen above is quite steep.

This little fellow hopped across our path on the way up.

Loch Skeen, a beautiful little water. Despite seeing a few small wild brown trout rising I couldn't get any takes on my #0 Mepps. Next time I visit I may take a fly rod and some small dry flies.

With a break in the recent thunderstorms and rain forecast for this morning and early afternoon I wanted to squeeze in a short session before the weekend. Also with a few days off booked next month but no solid plans yet I wanted to meet up with my mate Naz to discuss us potentially going on a short fishing trip. I had to be at work for 16:00 so I picked up Naz at 8:00 and we headed to Eliburn Reservoir in Livingston for some stress free maggot drowning and a chance to chat about potentially going for a short trip in August.

Fishing was quite slow at the first peg we picked so after an hour or so we decided to move. This paid off quite quickly with us both soon catching a few roach, Naz's first ever roach in fact, I also caught a couple of small perch and what we both agreed was the nicest fish of the short session, a lovely little tench.

One of Naz's roach.

A lovely if grumpy looking little tench. Always a nice surprise to see "the doctor fish".

As we watched the puddle chucker we chatted about various fishing destinations we would like to visit on the west coast of Scotland but it soon became clear that perhaps Naz wouldn't be able to make it on a short trip next month after all. This is a pity as that would have been good but I have no doubt that at some point, in the not too distant future hopefully, we'll manage to get a short trip organised and visit some of the places we talked about.

Tight lines, Scott.