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..

Nothing's gonna stop me now?

Having hit my 2023 species hunting target of two hundred species whilst on holiday on Crete, and by the end of the holiday having reached two hundred and twenty one species this year, I’ve been in two minds about what I should do between now and the end of the year. Maybe I should think about taking a well-earned break? I have been fishing a lot this year and do feel ever so slightly "burnt out"! Maybe I should take my foot off the gas, just relax a bit and enjoy some fishing without focussing on adding further species to my tally. Maybe I should make a serious effort to keep trying to add more?

Last Tuesday, I decided to head to Drumtassie Trout Fishery, with a couple of mates, Brian and Ryan, to hopefully catch my first rainbow trout of 2023. Perhaps catching another species this year would give me some indication of how motivated I was to keep species hunting. Lazily fishing a nugget buzzer three feet under an indicator, and letting the surface ripples do most of the work, it didn't take me long at all to achieve that goal. I hooked five and landed three after a couple of hours.

Not a bad looking fish for a stocked rainbow trout.

I then turned my attention to catching a brook trout, another species I've not caught this year. Switching to a sinking line, I tied on my favourite Ally McCoist lure, and spent some time fishing this close to the bottom. This didn’t produce any fish, so early in the afternoon I left the lads to continue fly fishing, and headed over to Drumtassie Coarse Fishery to try and tempt a barbel or a small Siberian sturgeon from their large coarse pond. Both would have been new Scottish species for me and also additions to my 2023 species tally. By this point the cold easterly wind had started to pick up a fair bit, and it soon got very cold. The fishing was tough. Float ledgering a whole dendrobaena worm over some feed pellets for three hours only produced two small ide.    

Greedy little swine!

Before I knew it, the sun had started to set, and it was time to call it a day and head back to pick up Brian and Ryan. I'd added one species to my 2023 tally. Being honest I’m still not sure what I’m going to do between now and the end of 2023. Had I somehow managed to catch a brook trout, a barbel, a Siberian sturgeon or two or even all three of them, I may have taken that as some kind of sign to push on with a determined effort to catch a lot more species this year. There are still quite a few species that I could target that I’ve not already caught this year in both freshwater and saltwater. As it gets colder catching some of them may become more difficult. If it warms up slightly again I might revisit the two Drumtassie fisheries again. I also intend to target grayling and zander over the coming months, two species I've not caught for a few years. I think I will keep trying to catch more species this year, I can't help myself! I'll just do it in a much more relaxed, pressure free, manner, with no target number in mind!

Tight lines, Scott.

The colours of the rainbow.

Before I went to Zakynthos I spent a day fly fishing trying to catch some funky trout. The funky trout in question being blue trout, a variant of rainbow trout, and tiger trout, a hybrid of our brown trout and the American brook trout. Basically I failed miserably, caught nothing and got a reminder how poorly I cast a fly. To try and remedy this I booked a couple of hours with Scottish fishing guide Callum Conner who runs Scotia Fishing. We have chatted before via text and email but Tuesday morning was the first time we had met in person. Off we went to a park so he could help me improve my basic fly casting. By the end of my two hour session Callum had certainly managed to do just that, had given me a lot of good advice and things to go away and work on to improve some more hopefully. Afterwards we also had a chat about fishing the River Ebro in Spain which is something Callum has done in the past and I am keen to do next year with my mate Martin to target perch, largemouth bass, wels catfish and zander on lures. Anyway, it was a very productive morning and keen to practice some more and hopefully catch some fish in the process off I went to a nearby trout fishery. My knowledge of flies is pretty poor too but Callum had also given me a few pointers regarding them and recommended using buzzers so I went with a deep red one. The pond I was fishing wasn't very deep and as I could see trout I was able to cast towards them and very slowly twitch the buzzer past them trying to get the fly at their depth as I did. After a while I managed to get a trout interested and seeing the white flash of its mouth as it took the fly I lifted the rod and hooked the fish. I knew it was one of the fish I was after so took my time playing it and it was soon in my net. 

My first ever blue trout. It's basically a rainbow trout with a genetic mutation which alters its pigmentation and has a dull blue back and a silver underside. They look a lighter shade of blue in the water.

I then hooked two more in fairly quick succession that managed to throw my barbless hook. After this positive start things were pretty slow however and none of the other anglers who arrived to fish the pond were having much luck either so I moved to another one nearby. A few anglers on this second pond were complaining that things were slow too so when I hooked and landed a second trout I felt I was doing quite well. This one turned out to be a standard rainbow trout. Another angler along from me then had a rainbow trout and a brown trout both on a dry fly. I stuck with my buzzer though and managed another two rainbow trout. 

Grey, gold, pink and silver. The natural colours of a rainbow. 

I could see the odd tiger trout in this pond too but couldn't get any of them to take. Oh well, I guess I shall have to try again. I think the next time I get my fly rod out though I shall head to Leith Links to practice what I learnt from Callum. I have to be honest also and say that I'm not overly keen on trout fisheries, I'd much rather be fly fishing on a river or loch but if I am to catch a tiger trout and the other variant of the rainbow, the golden trout I shall have to keep visiting them. Wild trout are so much nicer but before I get my waders on I'd like to improve my fly casting skills first. I'd also like to fly fish for grayling this winter so I better get practicing. Pike is another species I'd like to cast a fly at and obviously it can be used to target some saltwater species too. It's definitely an area I'm keen to explore more in the future and I think I'll be making use of Callum's excellent services again. If you too are interested in improving your fly casting then you should check out Scotia Fishing for fly casting lessons in Scotland.   

Tight lines, Scott.

The sun has got his hat on.

I should have had mine on too. I headed out yesterday for a full day of coarse fishing to hopefully catch plenty of fish and also the sun which had decided to come out of hiding. First I headed to Pumpherston Pond to have a go there for the first time. I popped into Livingston Angling on the way there and picked up some maggots.

Pumpherston Pond. It used to be a great little venue I'm told.

The water was crystal clear which meant I could see all of the rubbish on the bottom and there was a considerable amount unfortunately. It's such a shame that idiots dump litter and spoil such a nice pond. I decided to take an ultra light rod instead of my usual float rod to have a bit of fun playing the fish I caught. I set up and started fishing a single red maggot under a Puddle Chucker float. Another angler arrived and told me that a few pike had been caught there last week which was encouraging. He started fishing just along from me using a small Rapala. As if to prove what he had told me after a few casts he hooked a small jack, but lost it after a short scrap. He worked his way around the pond and disappeared out of sight. I meanwhile was having no luck at all and after about an hour or so I decided to head off to Eliburn Reservoir and began packing up. When I lifted my net out of the water it had a leech in it. I've never seen one before and it was quite a bizarre creature contorting its body as it wriggled in my hand and then taking on a ribbon like shape and swimming off when I threw it back into the pond.

I bet the perch and pike would snaffle this given the chance.

A short drive later I arrived at Eliburn and set up on a peg in the sheltered bay on the western side of the venue. Plumbing the depth and fishing on the deck it didn't take long before a I was getting a bite every other cast and had soon caught a load of perch, roach and a solitary ide which thrashed out of my hand just as I was about to take a photo of it.

One of twelve small spiky perch I caught.

A nice plump roach. Again, one of twelve.

It was at this point I noticed my arms were quite red and wondered what my head was like. With a pleasant breeze blowing all afternoon cooling my skin and the sun beating down for a change and reflecting back up from the water I thought it best to go and get some sun cream. Before I did though I decided to have a few more casts and I'm glad I did because the next fish I caught was a lovely tench that fought rather well, as tench do, with those big powerful fins.

Great fun on my ultra light gear.

Happy with the short session and looking forward to hopefully catching a few more rudd, practicing my fly casting and perhaps even catching a rainbow trout or two on the fly at Markle in the evening I headed back to the car, where upon seeing my reflection in the windows my fears were confirmed. My head was quite red indeed. I stopped off at a supermarket and bought some sun cream, although to be honest the horse had well and truly bolted from its "burnt bald head" stable.

I drove east and was soon at Markle. The wind had dropped right off, the sun was still shining and after another generous application of the factor 30 to try and prevent any further damage I headed over to the little bay to float fish for rudd. They were much more actively feeding up in the water, probably due to the sun warming it up a few degrees. I caught seventeen in a fairly short amount of time.

Rudd are lovely looking fish.

The two tufted ducks swam over and I thought they were going to start diving down and gobbling my maggots but they didn't. As I was watching them out of the corner of my eye I saw my float go under and when I struck the fish took off to my right away from the bushes. I knew it was a rainbow trout straight away and it was soon charging off stripping line against my loosely set drag. After a bit of scrap on my ultra light rod which was great fun I eventually drew the fish over my net but not before it coughed up a large quantity of my red maggots that it had obviously been happily scoffing before taking the one with the hook in it. I must say I'm not a great fan of rainbow trout, perhaps my least favourite fish in fact, their bloated appearance, which is obviously not natural, is not very nice in my opinion although apart from that this one was in reasonable condition.

Rainbow trout remind me a bit of Mr Blobby. Charging about smashing into things.

Given a minute or two to recover in the net it swam away strongly to gorge itself in readiness to inevitably fight another day. I continued float fishing and caught another three rudd, the last one was a bit larger than the rest I had caught and was in lovely condition.

Possibly the nicest rudd I've ever caught. I wasn't the only thing the sun gave a nice glow to.

Having caught twenty rudd I decided to pack up the float gear and go and practice my fly casting. To cut a long story short I really could do with some lessons. I did get one bite on a bright yellow dancer but didn't strike quick enough. It was some consolation that I only saw one other angler catch a solitary fish so maybe the bright conditions stacked the odds against me. That's my excuse anyway. I would really like to fly fish for pike in the future and would also like to try it for a few saltwater species too so I really need to get practicing. Anyway I packed up at dusk and headed home to rub moisturiser on my aching scalp.

A fairly close match to my two tone appearance.

I shouldn't complain though, we're long overdue some nice weather! I really must get a hat however. Perhaps I could get a nice IMA beanie from somewhere like the one my mate Ross wears?

Tight lines, Scott.

Short but sweet.

I got away from work early today and decided to head out for a couple of hours. Checking the weather forecast for a couple of potential places to fish I decided to head to Markle Fisheries in East Lothian. The wind was quite strong and I thought there might be a nice sheltered spot there. The main target would be rudd with the chance of rainbow trout too. The ponds there are also full of three-spined sticklebacks so a pack of my Gamakatsu #26 hooks went in the tackle box as well.

Arriving at the venue it was not as windy as I'd feared and in fact the area I like to float fish for rudd was fairly well sheltered. I quickly set up and started fishing, clipping up so I could cast into a gap between the overhanging bushes to my left . 

Fishing tight to these bushes normally produces rudd.

Feeding the swim with a few maggots it took about half an hour before I got my first bite and quickly landed a small rudd. This was followed by a further four over the next thirty minutes.

Rudd are a grumpy looking fish due to their upturned mouth.

Whilst I was fishing a pair of tufted ducks moved into my swim and began diving down and gobbling up the maggots I was tossing in. As they worked their way closer and closer to my float the inevitable happened and my float went under due to one of the ducks picking up my hookbait. After a short tug if war I managed to get the bird into my net after a few attempts and carefully handling the bird removed the hook from its bill. Letting it go it flew over to its mate and they wisely stayed away from my free offerings further along the pond.

The bird didn't seem too bothered by the whole experience.

With any fish that had moved into my swim being well and truly spooked by all the commotion caused when I was trying to land the duck I began feeding it again to try and tempt some back. It took a little while to get another bite and when I connected with it I quickly realised it was a rainbow trout that had taken my bait. It wasn't on for very long though, managing to shed the hook with a powerful head shake near the surface.

At this point I decided to have a go for a stickleback in the margins. They can normally be seen in small shoals around the reeds. I removed the float from my line and connected the tiny #26 hook. Rummaging through my tub of maggots I found the smallest one I could and nicked it onto the tiny hook. Wandering around the waters edge I soon spotted a few of the little spiny fish and lowered the maggot in amongst them. It took a while to get them interested and even then it was very frustrating watching them pecking at the bait but eventually my perseverance paid off when I managed to hook one of the bigger ones!

Don't be sad. Two out of three ain't bad.

At this point it started raining and I was feeling quite hungry so I decided to call it a day. Just as I was leaving though the pond was stocked with a rather large quantity of rainbow trout. I must say the thought of all those new additions in the pond makes it tempting to head back tomorrow to work on my fly casting and maybe I can catch a few of them in the process.

Tight lines, Scott.

Ruddy weather!

With time rapidly running out for me to hit my target of 15 freshwater species in 2012 and noting a reasonably mild temp of 11°C forecast for today when I checked the forecast last night, I got up early this morning and headed down to Markle Fisheries near East Linton to target the resident rudd again. I arrived just after sunrise and setup my float rod, the wind making this task a bit of a pain. Thankfully though the spot I planned to fish was slightly more sheltered than the rest of the pond and my maggots were soon falling through the water column. Fishing was quite slow and after a couple of hours or so I started thinking about moving. I turned my head to eye up a new spot and when I turned it back again my float had vanished. I lifted the rod and felt the weight of a fish. I knew straight away it was too big to be a rudd though and a rainbow trout was soon landed, unhooked and returned. Thinking that this visit may well pan out the same as my last, my fears were compounded when a second trout was caught an hour or so later. I then decided to move along a bit and fish my float tight into some overhanging, partially submerged bushes. Casting out and letting the wind slowly carry my float in amongst the branches, carefully paying out line and being careful not to snag it up I was rewarded with my first rudd bite of the day, which I struck and missed. Damn! Repeating the process and waiting patiently I was soon rewarded with another bite however and this time the fish was hooked!

December rudd. Better late than never.

My 14th freshwater species of 2012. A pretty one too.

Quite happy and another step towards my goal I carried on fishing but for whatever reason no more bites were forthcoming until the sun began to dip over the horizon. Then a feeding frenzy began! The rudd were obviously becoming confident as light faded and there was quite a lot of little splashes as they fed high up in the water and on the surface. I adjusted my depth accordingly and this saw me land a further seven rudd and lose a few more, all of them about the same size.

Their upturned mouths make them look a bit grumpy.

Such lovely little fish. Not sure if I prefer rudd or roach.

The blood red fins of rudd might just sway it in their favour.

Happy days and in the end I was glad I took the gamble and went down. Only three days left to catch my 15th freshwater species now and with some horrendous weather forecast I shall have to get my thinking cap on and come up with a cunning plan to give myself a chance of doing it!

Tight lines, Scott.

Looking for gold amongst the rainbows.

I popped down to Markle Fisheries near East Linton last week to try and catch a rudd to move my 2012 freshwater species tally one closer to my goal. With water temps dropping I knew it would be tough and was quite annoyed with myself for not popping down earlier in the year to target them. The bait pond there contains loads of them and in the past I've caught quite a few of them on maggots. When they are in the mood you can catch a rudd a cast on the drop which is quite good fun if not very challenging. They are pretty little fish and look similar to roach, the main differences being an upturned mouth, a golden tinge to there colouration, their dorsal fin is set further back than a roach and their fins are normally a deeper shade of orange or red.

Here's one I caught earlier. July 2011 in fact!

Anyway I started fishing in a small bay where there are some overhanging trees, the roots of which normally hold some rudd. Fishing was very slow to say the least and as the day went on I began to think I wasn't going to catch anything when my waggler float disappeared. Striking into the fish I knew almost straight away it was a trout and after a short fight it was in the net. I have to be honest and say that rainbow trout aren't my favourite fish. Brutish eating machines, they lack the finesse and in my opinion the beauty of other members of the salmonoid family. Of course they are not a native species and the ones in fisheries are farm bred so I'm sure this has a lot to do with their appearance and also their voracious appetites.

I'd love to catch a wild one "across the pond". I'm sure in their natural environment they're just as nice as our native brown trout.

Shortly afterwards my float bobbed a couple of times before slowly dissappearing. This made me think it could be a rudd but unfortunately it was another trout. With only an hour or so left I decided to work my way around the pond to try and locate some rudd. This didn't produce any though and a third trout would be my final action of the session and I left resigned to the fact that realistically I may not manage to get a rudd before the end of the year and also may struggle to get the two additonal species I need to reach my target of 15 freshwater species this year.

Tight lines, Scott.

Fly casting practice.

Late last week I headed to a small burn in East Lothian with my mate Jake for a short session of upstream lure fishing for the resident trout. I also took along my brook rod as I thought I may get the opportunity to do a spot of fly fishing, or should I say practice my casting. We parked the car, climbed down the bank and entered the burn. We began working our way up the river and Jake having fished it the day before very kindly allowed me to fish most of the pools and runs, offering advice as we went. With little sign of any trout though, me constantly getting my jighead caught in the rocks and then spooking the fish as I moved upstream to free it, I was glad when we then approached a nice weir pool.

After sneaking up to it, seeing plenty of small fish rising and having a few casts towards them with the lures but with no reward, I decided it was time to try my fly rod. I've not been fly fishing for long at all and my casting isn't very good yet. Trying to keep low so as not to spook the fish I kept catching my fly on the vegetation behind me. Jake offered some advice and after a while I finally managed to get a fish to show some interest, slashing at the nymph under the surface. Casting practice continued with Jake removing the fly from the long grass behind me once or twice before I finally got it where the fish were. I then worked on stripping line at the right speed to keep the nymph moving through the current and must have cracked it when a small trout took my fly and was hooked. I was very pleased and was so grateful to Jake for his great tuition!

My second small fish on a weighted nymph in a week.

Jake then had a go with my brook rod and it didn't take him long at all to get himself a small trout. A little escapee rainbow trout from the fish farm further down stream. My turn again and after some more hit and miss casting I hooked a second small trout. Quickly retrieved and landed, it was another small rainbow trout. I was over the moon and found the whole thing quite hilarious as I've never seen rainbow trout so small before.

My 9th freshwater species on lures of 2012.

We carried on for a while longer before heading back down stream. Jake fished as he went but had no luck so we headed home. A fun couple of hours and I'm looking forward to future fly fishing practice and hopefully hooking a bigger trout on my brook rod soon.

Tight lines, Scott.