[tag13]

Have you seen the latest Fishing Report on the ADAA website - 6lb brownie from upper Fintray with some pics - amazing fish.  I thought I read somewhere on the forum that the big fish are in the upper reaches at this time of year?

These pictures and those above are a real endorsement to the Don's reputation. I will keep trying and eventually .......

P.S. any news from Kintore at the weekend?

Tom

[Jim Eddie]

Great report and some belting troot    well done lads 

 

Jim

[Richard Tong]

Thanks for that Jim.

Iain as mentioned in the report the biggest fish was taken on a foam beetle-it refused a paradun and F Fly and as Paul could not see what it was taking he tried a beetle as there were a few about. The 2lb 10oz fish took a size 10 Klinkhamer and all the rest were either on Paraduns or F Flys,size 14 and 12 to match the LDO's and Olive Uprights(mainly 14's).

We may well make a trip or two mid summer to try some late evening fishing. We had one night in 2006 but chose the wrong stretch due to unfamiliarity with where the sun would be for the longest but have ID'd a couple of likely beats to try this year. There were a lot of fish on the feed when we were there in 06-certainly sounded a lot busier than at Spring time anyway!!

That Trout from Fintray is a cracker but doubt it is 6lb at 24" based on our figures.Pauls 5lb 8oz fish was 24.5" and well fed and we have had 3 @ 23.5" and they were 4lb 14oz,4lb 10oz and 4lb 3oz.Obviously there is weight variation based on a number of factors! He did well to land it on 2.5lb tippet and must have been worried that it would 'ping'. I am not so brave and do not want to lose a fish by getting snapped so generally use 5x Frog Hair which at 4.9lbs is strong enough to give the Trout plenty of welly but supple enough to get good drifts!

Up next week so fingers crossed for a good river level,no wind and blanket cloud cover.....nae chance!!

Richard

[Hamish Young]

Up next week so fingers crossed for a good river level,no wind and blanket cloud cover.....nae chance!!

You can pray........ 

[Iain Goolager]

Richard,
Thanks for that - I'm interested as I've only fairly recently started to tie my own dry flies and since reaching a point where I'm happy with my Klinks am now looking to increase my range of system flies & other 'worth having' river dries.

So I have two questions..........  does the foam beetle have a 'sighter' tag tied around the 'neck'? (I'm sure I saw an article with this in some magazine or other - Paul Procter design?) & do you tie your comparaduns with coastal Deer Hair or Siliconised Polypropylene Yarn (had an interesting conversation with Pete at Niche yesterday), just looking for any advantage or otherwise from a fishing standpoint.

It's funny how all those vaguely remembered fly-tying articles only come to mind after her indoors has made you throw out your 1.5 Tonne stack of magazines which were stressing the loft joists.

Cheers
Iain

[Sandy Nelson]

Belting fish  

Have to agree with richard about size/weight issue, it would be interesting to find out how this works ,Ben?
My largest Don trout was 23" and weighed 4lb 14oz, was in perfect condition and caught at the end of june
So go figure

  I thought I read somewhere on the forum that the big fish are in the upper reaches at this time of year?

Tom

This is not quite what has been said, There is a fair amount of evidence to support the idea that the Trout migrate up the river to spawn,they then return (based on the idea that brownies are territorial) to their home stretch. It is also widely regarded that the middle and upper reaches fish better early season than the lower stretches, why?, no one actually knows, but many theories abound, Water temp, stocking policies etc, however The lower reaches do have massive hatches of flies that dwarf some of the upper river hatches, yet fish are often nowhere to be seen, Perhaps the upper reaches having sparser hatches, mean the fish are more likely to feed and be seen feeding .
I do not doubt the fish are there, you just maybe dont see them quite the way you can further up river.
It is now 6 weeks into the season and the river should be on song throughout its length, so keep trying, the big ones are everywhere

Incidently, does anyone know what happened to the river on Sunday? When i was at Parkhill on Sunday afternoon the river was quite high, very brown and really dirty, a sharp change from Saturday morning, and this morning its back to being a decent height and clear Almost like a mini flash flood, very odd.

Sandy

[Ross]

It was brown on my way into work this morning!

Is anyone heading out Parkhill way this week (Evenings) or weekend? Weather is looking good and I fancy going for a few casts!

[Richard Tong]

Iain,

It did have a sighter tag and was Peacock herl or Peacock Glister underbody,black foam and white poly sighter tag. It looked appx a size 14 and the fish was so strong it bent the hook!

We did not use Comparaduns(I take it you have recently read the Robert Irvine article in T & S?). Instead we used paraduns which have a sighter post(grey,white or pink we use depending on the light conditions) and a hackle tied Parachute style around the base. If you can get your hands on a copy of Salmo Trutta 2008 which is the yearly publication of the Wild Trout Trust,Oliver Edwards has written a cracking article called "What's Yer Favourite Dry Fly" on p30 and covers many of the upwings that we will see throughout the season. They are generally Paraduns and variations on the F Fly in the article. It's good to see he has not retired fully and that there is life in the old dog yet. His articles generally are the biz!

Incidentally having been a member since it started out as The Wild Trout Society I have to say that this edition of Salmo Trutta is the best to date IMHO. There are some very interesting articles on Stockies and their impact (or not as the case may be)on wild Trout populations plus lots of other good articles,

Richard

[Iain Cameron]

Incidently, does anyone know what happened to the river on Sunday? When i was at Parkhill on Sunday afternoon the river was quite high, very brown and really dirty, a sharp change from Saturday morning, and this morning its back to being a decent height and clear Almost like a mini flash flood, very odd.
Sandy

hi sandy, i'm maybe stating the obvious, but it rained overnight on saturday; i had fished the cruives beat on saturday, and water was nicely down; fished parkhill lower on sunday and it was high and brown.

cheers
iain

[Sandy Nelson]

Cheers Iain

Must have been a lot of rain

Thats what i figured but it never rained much with us, I think

Sandy

[Hamish Young]

There was plenty of it up here in the hills - along with a thunder storm for good measure All went away quickly enough but a wee spracchle over to upper Donside this morning on the way home confirmed still plenty of water - slightly coloured - in the river.

Should be runnng clear tomorrow if it stays dry 

[Richard Tong]

You can pray........ 

Well Paul must have been praying then! I spoke to him earler tonight and he had managed to get up last night from Gleneagles where he was doing an article on a loch yesterday.

Today he has had cloud cover,no wind and rising fish to throw at all day. Consequently he has had a stack of fish....over 30 in total,all on dry fly(except an 8lb Salmon early on on a Sculpin!). The flys were either an F Fly or a Paradun size 14. There were clouds of Grannom but the fish were on LDO.

He lost a fish at the net after a long fight and he estimated it at 5lb+. He lost another shortly after hooking it when it cartwheeled and that was over 3lb. His big fish were 21" and 3lb 10 oz,20" and 3lb 4oz,2lb 1oz and 2lb 0oz.

After so many trips we have had when the fishing has been really tough he deserves a day like today and he rates it as good as the day we had in 2005 when we had a red letter day. I am chuffed for him and at the same time disappointed not to be there myself!!

Not sure if he is fishing Don tomorrow as he is supposed to be doing another article on a loch near Edinburgh but that may not come off. I will report if he does fish Don. Some other mates are going up early tomorrow morning and tomorrow and Saturday so it will be interesting to see how they fare

He changed Beats when the one he was on looked quiet and hit the jackpot.Strangely Beat 3 downstream of his was also fished but the angler there barely saw any fish.


What a river...brick hard one day,tough on others and World Class occasionally.Thats what makes it all worthwhile,

Richard

[tag13]

Strangely Beat 3 downstream of his was also fished but the angler there barely saw any fish.

Fished the council beat above the Alford Bridge last night and similarly only saw one fish rise the whole evening.  There was a massive hatch of uprights (don't know what type as I'm new to this) - as I was casting I heard a splash to my left and there was an otter leisurely making its way up the pool (someone walking his dog said that a pair had been seen regularly) - what impact do they have on the fish population?

Tom

[Richard Tong]

Rather than start a new topic I will just add to this one on our latest trip to the Don.Fortunately I had managed a day of appointments starting in Perth,then to Dundee and ending finally in Aberdeen last Wednesday where I finished at 4pm ish.We then departed hastily to Monymusk,booked into the Grant Arms and were on a beat by 5pm!! Cloud cover was quite good,there was still a bit of an easterly but nothing too severe.We did the usual walking and looking and I spotted a large fish come up a couple of times which I decided to go and have a look at. Paul then spotted a fish which was rising regularly enough to target and before long was fighting and landing a 2lb 12oz brownie-what a start!Paul crossed the river to a waist deep fastish run where the light was better to see rises.As he was upstream of me I kept one eye on how he was progressing whilst sitting on the fish I had seen rise. He then caught a 1lb 10oz fish followed by a 19" 3lb 0oz fish. I abandoned my perch and moved opposite him at which he then hooked and landed a 2lb 9oz fish. Calling on me to join him opposite to make use of the better light within another few minutes he had an 18" 2lb 8oz Trout(which I got a photo of)..the time was now 7:30pm so he had taken 4 Trout over 2lb in appx 2.5hours fishing....what an incredible night for him.He was delighted and elated. Me,I blanked but was priveleged to have witnessed the action to Pauls rod.We walked some more of the beat before beating a hasty retreat to the Hotel to watch the Man Utd v Chelsea game in the bar and even got there in time to see Ronaldos' goal!

Thursday saw us on a different beat with less cloud cover and a stronger wind. Not much to report on the day,very little activity on the surface. We tried spiders and even a Sculpin in one run with no results. Suffice to say I had on Trout of appx 7" and Paul had blanked! We were out again in the evening and Paul eventually saved his blank with a Trout of just under 1lb and I had another of maybe 12oz.All in all not a very good day and good reason to go with a mate to buoy you spirits and have a laugh with whilst praying that the next day will not be as bad.

Friday was our last day and again we decided to try a different beat walking half its length downstream looking at which sections may produce rising fish later in the day.There was still the same squally,nagging easterly that we had the day before which seemed to die down and then suddenly spring up again from nowhere making presentation problematical. We bumped into a Salmon angler on the same beat and he had been there all week. He told us he had taken 2 Trout in that time,both large with the biggest maybe 3lb, on an Allys Shrimp....but we weren't that desperate!

Walking up the beat again Paul elected to go through as pool with spiders as no fish were rising and I walked a further 10 mins upstream to try a nice looking pool. Around 12 ish some LDO's started hatching and some nice Trout started rising however when I attempted to test the margin depth with my rod it came back chest high so I had to abandon this attempt and go and search for somewhere more favourable.

Five minutes walk upstream I found what I had been looking for...large rising fish and quickly tried calling Paul on his mobile but as he had no signal I sent him a text instead. I soon had one fish of 1.5lbs in my net but there was another fish in particular whose rise form left you in no doubt that it was a bit of a beast and it was just rising off the bank every couple of minutes. When I was in position it was 12:30ish and I could see that it was not taking duns so surmised it was feeding on Terrestrials. Typical of these large Don Trout(or not untypical anyway) it was also moving about a bit so it was not a case of just casting above the same spot.Unfortunately its rising had become less frequent(as had the other fish on the go in the pool) so there were long periods of just sitting and waiting for the next rise. I did see his head come out a couple of times when taking a particularly large bumbling terrestrial. I changed from a foam beetle to a Foam Hawthorn pattern tied a few years ago from a FF & FT article by Charles Jardine which had sat unused till then but I felt it had the right profile to do the job in hand. I felt confident that eventually I would get him as none of my deliveries had caused him to go down,I just do not think that he saw any of them! Eventually after maybe 15-20 casts in 2.5 hours up he came to my fly and he was on,dived down,shook his head and was off,the rod springing back at me. I was gutted and all sorts of thoughts ran through my head...had I struck hard enough or did I tighten too soon? This sort of thing can do your head in especially as I estimated him to be in the 5lb region. However I know where he is and I will be back sometime to look for him!!

I upped sticks and went for a long walk and incredibly found another large fish on the go in another pool. By this time Paul had joined me and had heard my tale of woe. The same game ensued,again I got good drifts and eventually he came up,his big head sliding over the fly and on tightening he surged downstream,bored deep and jumped a couple of times so we knew he was a big fish which we thought would go 3.5lbs or so. He then ran downstream for 25 yards to the middle of the river in the blink of an eye,putting a dangerous curve in the fly line with all the water pressure on the line. I then was able to pump him back to within 20 yards whereupon he dived into some bankside reeds which had some flotsam in the margins. I was able to run down the bank,vaulting the odd tussock,gaining line all the time. I knew that he would not be able to see me through the flotsam. Paul was in front of me and cleared the flotsam away and quickly netted him . He still had tons of energy but the flotsam had blinded him and proved his undoing. We measured him at 22.5" and 4lb 3oz,he was a beauty with wonderful markings.

We then jumped in the car to go and look at the top of our beat and were fortunate to find another pool with fish on the go. As it was Pauls turn I went sufficiently downstream so I could keep and eye on him whilst still keeping a watch for other fish that I could go for. In maybe 15 minutes he had landed 3 fish up to 1lb 14 oz on cdc dun and then locked onto something bigger.All these fish were rising on station. Before long he had hooked the large fish and I could tell that it was substantial,so hot footed it up and into the water beside him. This one was not a 'jumper' but was dogged and putting a very good bend into his rod. The water was sufficiently clear when he brought it close enough for me to see and I could tell that it was sizeable and on telling him,Paul said "don't tell me that!". It kept diving off each time he brought it closer and it could clearly see me but I managed to net it eventually when Paul got its head up. Paul looked at it in the net and said "21ins and 3lb 10oz"-it went 21.5" and 3lb 10oz so a very good guess!!

We could not have wished for better fish than these two and reluctantly had to leave as it was after 4pm by now and Paul had some demo to do in Bakewell on Saturday at 9am. Otherwise we would have stayed a lot longer.

This beat was good to us on Friday but we have fished it before and it has been tough. Just like anywhere on the Don it is pot luck whether you are going to get good fishing and what fishes well one day, in our experience,does not necessarily fish as well the next day and vice versa.For this reason I have not mentioned beats by name but they are available to all and part of the fun is finding your own favourite spots isn't it? We certainly intend to go searching new water and one of our ambitions is to be able to identify the beats on the river which,given wind from certain quarters will provide some parts that are sheltered somewhat.

That is two trips this year which we have done. She is certainly fishing well for us,much better than last year. It would be nice to get another trip in but time is running out! Photos sent to Mike and Hamish by e mail for them to post here. Good fishing to all you guys up there,

Richard

[Noel Kelly]

Richard
Your posts are an inspiration and very informative so thanks for that. Really struggling on the Don myself but its good to be reassured the rewards are there.
Lack of patience is my main downfall i think but im working on it.
Looking forward to those pics 
Noel.