fishing during the fringe

its crazy time in my home town of Edinburgh the festival is on and the streets are crowded with tons of crazy tourists asking tons of daft questions

"hey can you tell me where princess street is "

"your standing on it fella"

"oh its underground"

yup that's a true story i was asked this very question last week whilst waiting for duke to go fishing , i had to meet him at the mound on princess street at early o'clock and at that time you only get the die hard tourist asking daft questions

Edinburgh and daft tourist in the background

a fly for all seasons

the fly above is fast becoming a favorite a basic bottom bouncing fly but incorporates a piketrek rattle placed so as with the dumbbell eyes it will fish hook up off the bottom I've also for a body and to hide the rattle I've used piketreks spectrum twist this is a great body material and threes loads more you do with it as well but more on that another time or click the link and check it out

so after a while we got to where we needed to be and i rigged up a saber for duke . and i used a loop saltwater 7 wgt i like to go lighter on the canal as you get a better scrap with the fish and if you do get a bigger fish you can control and land them quickly , duke however is a novice so the saber is a rod that he will be able to hook and hold a fish and land it very quickly

ARMED AND READY

a beautiful place
i needed to do some exploring I've wanted to check this bit of water out for a while and it certainly looked like a predators hang out i only had a few nips at this stretch which i think may have been perch but i persevered and changed to smaller flies but to no avail but i shall return to this spot

a turning bay
these are nice features on canals they were used for turning boats around as well as passing places for fishing these spots tend to be slightly deeper than the rest of the canal these spots can provide a harvest in the colder winter months as all the baitfish tend to haul ass to these spots and the predators are not far behind when the fridge is full ,

i cast a line into the spot and straight away i had a follow from a fish of around 12 to 15lbs great to see but a little disconcerting that i couldn't get it to take and if the fish were in a slow mood it was going to be a tough job

easy casting venue

er maybe not have you seen those trees , well you can fish quite easily just by parallel casting and then flicking it to the right at the last moment sends the line across the water , casting parallel is also good for walking and fishing the nearside bank , duke however had never heard of this method

and ended up a tree quite a few times


one of the thing i love about fly fishing is by traveling light you can cover a lot of water and you get to see a lot of stuff from wildlife to changes in weather and if you live in Scotland you may if your very lucky spot a very rare wild native Scottish tree troll they are quite harmless as long as you give them a bite to eat when passing them , i was lucky enough to catch one on camera

duke still needs a bit of work on his casting skills but by the end of the day he had pretty much got the basics and enjoyed himself , the fish however were not playing ball today i shall however go try again maybe next week its pretty much the same on here if they ain't up for it theres nothing your going to be able to do to catch them full stop but still a very enjoyable day

so ended a great day , OK maybe the fish were not playing ball but in truth this venue only really comes into its own in Autumn (that will be fall to our American Friends) the water becomes a lot clearer as the boat traffic decreases so getting out there and finding spots using your watercraft on new stretches means that you cut down on wasted time by finding these spots and to be quite honest I'm happy being out there testing flies so its all good for me

check back tomorrow for some new flies and funky stuff

see ya all tomorrow

Dave