[Matt Hart]

Heading up to a friend's caravan this weekend coming and found out tickets for the bay are only £2 per day. From what I've seen on facebook, low tide seems to be the best time to see Sea Trout coming through just as the tide is changing. This is meant to be around mid afternoon on Saturday so it may be a bit bright but it'll be a fine day to wet a line anyway.

Has anyone on here got any experience fishing the mouth of the river there? I was thinking singles, size 10 maybe, teal blue and silvers, cinnamon and golds, maybe some zulus?

I'll also be setting up a bait rod for my friend to try and get him some flatties from the shore side. He's never fished before so I think trying to teach him to fly fish for ST in an hour would prove difficult, and there's no spinnning there til July (or at leats later in June) as far as I'm aware.

[James Laraway]

I'll be intrigued to hear how you get on as it's not far from me ..

[Fred Hay]

I've never fished the bay but have seen the odd guy fishing, usually on the ebb tide - mostly spinning though.
The last time I was up that way there were quite few seals at the mouth  of the bay so don't know how it will fish.
Always fancied a cast there and would be interested to know where the permits can be purchased for £2 a day - I always thought it was under Forres Angling Club and more like £20 a day.
As for flies the only time I've fished in salt water for sea trout was at the Ythan Estuary and the favourite was Ythan Terrors basically two/three feathers tied on a size 8 or 10 hook with a silver body.  Almost like mackeral feathers so browns, white, blue, badger were usually successful - cast out and stripped back fairly quickly.
Hope you have a successful day..

[Matt Hart]

So the weekend went well! We only fished the Saturday, as friday night was speant heavily under the influence of rum  .

We did walk along to the mouth late on the friday though, as low tide was at 11:30pm or so. So I wanted to have a look and see what we were going to be working with the next day. This was what we found...





Popped along to the local shop the next morning, with a bit of a sore head, and got myself and my friend our tickets for the day, at a grand total of £5 for the pair of us (£2.50 for a day ticket). I asked about the price, and the chap gave me an explanation behind why it is still so cheap. I won't post it here in case the wrong person reads it, but if the reason he gave me is true, and if anyone on their committee is reading this, please do carry on exactly as you are  .

Here is the ticket for anyone wanting to have a read of their rules etc;



Saturday ended up being an absolute scorcher, 24/25 degrees or so and not a cloud to be seen...so I really didn't think we were in for a chance of catching anything, but we cracked on nevertheless. My friend, who had never touched a fly rod in his life, was eager to give it a go thankfully (since there's no spinning allowed just now). After a basic fly fishing 101 lesson, he picked it up very quickly which was great! We had a bit of a breeze from behind us which helped him get the line out as well so that was a bonus, even if it did cause a couple of tangles.

Firstly I did a bit of a demonstration myself just to show how far to go back and forth with the rod etc and how it all works, and on my second cast in to the water, I had a small ST/Finnock follow my fly right to the waters edge! Luckily he saw it too, so this gave us a bit of hope!

The fly in question...



Not long after, I was in to something, nothing big, but wow what a fight for a small fish! After a quick photo it was back in to the water. I was just glad to have caught something when I'd been giving it the big chat the night before 



We kept an eye on the bay as we fished, and both of us witnessed a number of ST acrobatics, plus some VERY good sized salmon leaping out of the water on the opposite bank. I reckon if we had been spinning, a few bigger fish would have been caught.....so I'll be back up with the spinning rod after the 15th  .

All in all, a great day was had, and as mentioned, I'll be back up to fish it again .

[Sandy Nelson]

That looks like a lot of fun, Matt
Bonny fish too 

[Steven Kidd]

That looks like a great bit of water......some monsters surely lurk in there....

Steven

[Mike Barrio]

Great stuff Matt, and some awesome colours on that fish