The lauder in the Scottish borders

a few hours on the neighbour's pond...

I snuck out for a few hours on my neighbour's pond. The weather was perfect for fishing a small stillwater: a bright sky, slight breeze and warm day. With all the rain recently the rowing boat took a while to empty using the rusty old sauce pan but it offered me a few minutes to watch the water.

There were a few unhurried rises, mainly along the fringes of the weed bed: the pond perimeter is almost completely weeded now with little opportunity to fish from the bank. Once on the water I noticed spent large white mayfly that must have emerged early in the morning, also there were quite a few large (#10) midge pupae emerging... I suspended a suitable black midge imitation beneath a large buoyant dry.

1 brown and 4 rainbows later I rowed in to the bank and went home... what a pleasure :-)

Bass fever intensifies

I've sought the advice of the experts, I think I am starting to get a good grounding for how the bass in the UK operate and what I need to do to catch them on fly (remember I've only been out once before where I got a wee schooly on a clouser).

I had a good chat with Austen Goldsmith of UKSaltwaterflies.com who was a huge help. Amongst a lot of advice, Austen also sent me a few of his killer bass patterns. I'll tie up a few more with the materials he uses (like the DNA FFF stuff which just blows me away) before I hit the water hopefully next week. Austen also suggested I buy "Hooked on Bass" by Alan Vaughan and Mike Ladle and focus especially on chapter 5 "shallow rocky shores". That chapter did it for me... I spent the next few hours on Google Earth searching out appropriate pieces of coastline. I reckon I have had my nose up against at least 100miles of coast this past few days via Google earth!


I'll let you know how I go on the water...