Off the mark at last!

Yesterday was not your typical perfect day for Salmon fishing, bright sunshine all day and very hot. I had planned to meet a friend down the river who came to do a piece for his online fishing magazine. Obviously, catching a fish to order is never going to easy and it looked like yet another blank day ahead for me. When we arrived at the beat, I tackled up with a plan of fishing up first with a spinner and if we saw any fish we could go back and cover them with the fly. We arrived at the first pool, one of my favourites and I pointed out where the fish might lie and that they would follow the spinner out of the deep hole and take as the spinner started to come up the shallower pool tail. Five casts later - Bang!

It was like clockwork, I was astounded at our good fortune, it seemed un-believable. After a short but spirited battle the lovely fresh cock fish of  about albs was duly returned. What a start to the day, we continue to fish the lower beat as the sun beat down on us, this was probably a blessing as the massive bull in the field was pretty lethargic. After a quick bite for lunch we headed up to the top beat. This beat is about five mile upstream and the river is a lot shallower with some nice streamy runs. I hooked a sea trout in one of the deeper runs but unfortunately this came un-stuck after a few seconds. There were a few sea trout about but un-fortunately the only excitement was a couple of follow but no contact. The heat finally defeated us and we decided to call it a day. more exciting news came in the form of a phone call from Tony on Friday, he had landed another large fish around the 20lb mark, he also lost a good sea trout and the rod who shares the beat lost a salmon, it seems that there are plenty of fish about and more encouragingly, some big ones- roll on Sunday!

Tony's fish