Sunday, 30th April

Carron Valley Reservoir, Day Session

The mouth of the Carron burn

With the club having kicked Loch Leven into touch, Carron remains the only brown trout fishing on our fixture list.  It was therefore a bit disappointing to see only 12 rods on it.  The stay-at-homes missed a cracking day for it.  It may have been a bit cool yet, and a bit too calm at times, but any day offered to you at Carron with a promise of nearly 100% high ceiling, you are going to take!  The other important factor was that there was a terrific buzzer hatch.  The water is stuffed with fish, and they were rising, on and off, all day long.  The fish were in fine fettle too, and fighting well, particularly the stockies, though that may just have been a result of being a bigger average size than the wild fish.

Bob Whyte with a good-sized wild fish

The results at the end showed that it had been a water of two halves.  Our 6 boats just happened to settle on 3 fishing up the far end, around Carron Bay and beyond, while 3 stayed between the harbour and Binns Bay.  The 3 from up the far end returned catches of 25, 20 and 24, while the 3 from the near end returned catches of 8, 11 and 6.  We suspect the reason was not that there were more fish up the top half, simply that the fish up the top half were taking better on the day.

What were they taking?  Well, with buzzers hatching, and fish rising, most folk concentrated on dry fly.  Everyone who fished dries found it tricky going at times, and everyone had a try with other tactics.  Most of those back-up plans were worth a fish or two as well.

Dougies Goddard and Skedd, with Carron Bay to themselves.  Well, almost.

Dougie Skedd and Dougie Goddard's fish on dries came to sparkle gnat, claret Shipmans and dry bibio, with back-up of Connemarra black on floating line, and figure-of-eighted dries.  Ian Macdonald and son Gavin's fish on dries came to CDC F-fly in black and hare's ear, with back-up of pulling on intermediate or floater with snatchers, black tadpoles and yellow dancer (shame!).  Bob Whyte and I had our dry fly sport to CDC, Shipmans and hopper (all in black), with back-up of figure-of-eighted buzzers on the floater, and pulling trads such as black pennell on intermediate.

Alan Holbrook was by far the best of the rods who stayed closer to home.  He had a bag of 9 to snatchers on floating line, along the road shore.  Tommy Steven had half a dozen in Binns Bay to dries -- hare's ear CDC and dry bibio.

Of the club's catch of 94 fish, 15 were kept, for 15 lb 4 oz.

Photos: Canon 10D with 17-40mm lens

I took the wide angle lens to try to get some decent landscape shots... as the pros always swear by wide angle lenses for landscape work.  I thought if there is one water with enough angles to avoid the usual problem, Carron is it.  The usual problem is that when you are out on the water, landscapes tend to consist of a big strip of sky at the top, a thin strip of land in the middle, and a big strip of water at the bottom!  However, it just didn't work.  Not only that, but having been a late, dry spring, everything is still totally colourless... and cold-looking.  The couple above had the colour saturation hiked-up and the white balance warmed-up to make them presentable.  Decidedly a case of best of a bad bunch though.