Early season trout are proving elusive

Waffle and I have been prospecting. I cannot say it was a very serious expedition. More a rod-armed walk along the river, and in truth the rod rather got in the way of the walk. Still, there is not much point in walking a river without a rod. Just in case.

My daughter had just returned from a week with friends on the Spey, most of the time up to her oxters in grue – essentially ice floes from which, I think, we get the word gruesome. As usual for early March the river was riddled with kelts, spent fish, which always upsets the real fishermen/women because they don’t consider them proper fish. Well they are certainly not edible so they have a point. The rest of us are thrilled to have anything on the line.

Anyway they only managed two salmon in the week, which considering the height of the water and the time of year and temperature was quite impressive. Even so things got so bad that one day they had to take the children to the local soft play area. For serious fisherfolk to abandon the river for the soft play area, things have to be pretty awful.

Anyway it was all this talk of water and no fish that finally bestirred myself and Waffle to make an inspection of the home waters as suddenly the tone of the weather shifted from unwelcoming to a shy come on.

A small lift in temperature and signs, even this far north of daffodils and the occasional cheep of birdsong and, lord love us, the woodpecker pecking.

It is said the early season trout fisherman can steal a march on brown trout as they are still slumberously dopey from their partial hibernation. In other words they may be receptive to an enticing Hare’s Ear or Pheasant Tail nymph hopping along over the bottom.

I like to consult Waffle when it comes to choosing flies but she is really not much help and just wants to go swimming and chase ducks and, later on, their ducklings.

Still, we meandered, which is about the only word, downstream for about a mile, occasionally stopping to cast a line under banks and along the shallower edges and getting the rod and line tangled up in one of those infuriating barbed wire fences that were once meant to keep cattle out of the river but have since collapsed under the weight of spates.

Had I been armed we could have had a right and left of mergansers, the protected sawbill ducks which gobble their way through tons of baby fish. Quite why they are protected is a bit of a mystery. They didn’t arrive in the UK until 1871. And the RSPB gets all upset about pheasants which have been here for centuries. n