Myself and a few friends from work decided to have a day out at Mar Lodge on Saturday. According to FishDee there is 3miles of single bank fishing with double bank above the Linn of Dee.
The river was reportedly 1ft 3" above the gauge on Friday night so I had high hopes for Saturday but was disappointed to see that it was down to 9" over the gauge by Saturday morning. It was also very windy on Saturday. We split up in the morning with one going to the top of the upper beat, I started in the middle and the other rod at the middle of the lowe section. Apparantly the river is very small on the upper section which is all above the Linn of Dee and the rod quickly moved down to the lower section which is from the Linn of Dee downstream. The first three pools from the Linn of Dee down provided little fishing, with either very shallow water or very slow moving deep water.
Looking upstream of the Canadian Camp Pool.
I had taken a 15ft rod and 10ft 7wt. I was able to fish the deep slow moving water by stripping a heavy fly and an extra fast sink tip off a floating line. Ideally I should have probably had a sinking line on too. The other stretches I put on a medium sink tip and a light fly on the singlehander. Once past the Victoria bridge the the river really opened up and I was able to use the double hander but to be honest a 15ft was over gunning it, a 13ft rod would have been perfect or even a switch might have been the answer.
Choose your weapon
In reality I think the stretch would be best fished with high water however we booked in advance and couldn't do much about the water level once we got there. What was really good was that each pool has a white post with a number on it and you get a written description of the pool too.
Number 13 "Canadian Camp" unlucky for all of us
I caught the only fish of the day, and for the record Iain it was a Silver Stoat!
Looking down the suspension pool
I would go back but only at short notice and with confirmation of a decent height of water!
Cheers
Matt