Man, but it's fun chatting on a relaxed thread, ie something different to the fraught one about the Royal Bervie Salmon! I didn't mean any criticism about the "old thread" situation here......it was just an introductory comment.
Anywa, our three days on the Annan (Cleughhead, just below Hoddom) were a series
of gales, bright blue skies with scudding clouds, some sharp heavy bursts of rain.....and a low clear river at a cold 42 degrees. There were quite a few old stagers about (including one huge kipper that emptying the water out of the deep dub it was resting in, every it sloshed on the surface). And some some silver 'uns were running hard off each high tide. But by the very late afternoon of the 2nd day, we hadn't touched a thing on the fairly typical 1-1.5" aluminium or brass tubes and bottle-tubes on 15lb Maxima and medium-to-fast sinking tips. So I thought, "stuff this for a game of sodgers" and switched to 12lb fluoro, an intermediate sink-tip and that most classic of November borders flies, a wispy orange Ally's dressed on a tiny size 12 silver Salar treble.
One lost and one pulled fish later, I let the others in on the secret and it resulted in five fish hooked, played and lost or C&R'd the next day including one well into the teens. But the only one actually landed, was on the old River Cowie autumn stand-by of three lobworms drifted unweighted through a deep slow trench on a single size 4 silvered sea bait hook. Some don't like the Annan... :z6count me amongst those that do. But the fish definitely don't read the usual textbooks on autumn flyfishing.
PS Anyone know of a reliable source for these silver or gold Partridge Salar treble fly hooks? They're like gold dust (I got mine off Ebay, of all places).