Anything goes!

I've never been an angler who limits myself or gets snobby when it comes to different styles of fishing. Fresh or salt. Day or night. Shore or boat. Traditional or unorthodox. Bait, lure or fly. I don't care really! As a species hunting angler, I'll use whatever method I think will be most effective and is at my disposal in any given situation. I may enjoy some types of fishing more than others but as long as I'm catching fish, I’m usually happy. When I braved the cold easterly winds and accompanying showers on Tuesday, to visit Drumtassie Trout Fishery in the afternoon for a few hours, I fished on its fly fishing ponds and went with an approach that would probably boil the blood of your average traditional fly fisherman! 

A single puddle bug cat, fished under an Air-Lock sight indicator.

To my mind it’s more akin to float fishing, but it was certainly very effective. The colour of the puddle bug cat didn’t seem to matter too much either. On three different colour variations I had eight trout in six hours. A few more were hooked and managed to successfully eject my not so natural offerings. All bar one were rainbow trout, the odd one out being my first blue trout of the year. Technically, a rainbow trout as well, just one with a genetic mutation that is responsible for the colouration difference. 

Blue trout usually have fewer spots than a standard rainbow. As their name suggests they’re also a blue colour across their backs. This one looked a deeper shade of blue from above when it was upright in the water. It looks more like a green trout in the photo above!

A bog standard rainbow trout. Looks nicer than the blue variant in my opinion. 

All things considered, it was not a bad little session in less than ideal conditions. It’s not my favourite method to fish or type of venue to visit, and if I’m honest the only reason I’d visited the fishery again so soon was in the hope that I’d get lucky and catch a brook trout, which I'd failed to do. I guess I just can’t switch off species hunting mode, but as long as I'm able to get out over the coming winter months and catch a few fish that’s fine!

Tight lines, Scott..