Storm Kathleen couldn’t stop me fishing for a few hours on the River Tummel last week. I was on the last few days of honeymoon and walked down to the river at Pitlochry, at the very top of the Pitlochry Angling Association water.
It was 2 degrees, it had been snowing and the river was running high and coloured. I fished a team of spiders with a small beaded nymph on the point and started getting pulls in the slacker water. They never came to much. As the day warmed up and a small hatch of Large Dark Olives started to appear, some fish started moving so I dressed the top dropper spider with Gink and immediately took a trout of around a pound. It was long and very lean - much different from the fat trout on the Aberdeenshire Don I have been catching recently. I took 3 or 4 more trout to around 12oz but this time on the heavier point fly, as it started to swing and rise in the water.
I saw a very good head and tail rise down below me and couldn’t reposition myself to fish it with a dry fly, so I let my flies swing down towards it and then lifted my rod to induce a take. I had no idea the size of that fish when it took my point fly initially, it felt heavy in the current and was not for being moved. I tried to get below the fish but it tore off downstream into some very fast water. I followed it and was gaining some interest from two men in the nearby sheltered housing and some salmon fisherman on the opposite bank who were shouting questions at me, which was off putting. “What did you catch it on?” Etc. It continued to run downstream and I stumbled after it and eventually netted a very thin but beautifully marked 3lb 4oz brownie. It regurgitated two small trout in the net as a thank you.
The fisherman opposite thought I had hooked a big sea trout and all gathered to fish opposite where I was fishing. I released the big trout and then returned to the run upstream and took another 3 brownies to around a pound before I trudged back to the Airbnb.
