High Water

Yesterday saw several anglers trying to make the best of the tricky conditions. The water was at just over 3ft above summer level at the beginning of the day and relatively clear. The river did start to colour up as the day went on and had risen a few inches by evening. Despite this, Donald Milne captured a hard-fighting cock fish that needed several attempts at being netted before it was safely on the bank. The fish was sportingly released moments after the photograph was taken.
Donald pictured with his fish.

Report for W/E 14th November

There are plenty of fish in the upper river now. We've had 13 salmon (and a sea trout) in the last week even though the river was rising on Friday and pretty much unfishable on Saturday. Most notable catch this week was for John Kane who had a successful day on Tuesday with 4 salmon to 14lb, returning all but one.

The river rose to a height of around 7' late on Saturday but, by this evening, had fallen back to 3'4" at Peebles. That's the good news; unfortunately there is bad news too, we are likely to see enough rainfall tomorrow to bring the river back up and more rain is forecast for later in the week.

Another good day

We had another 5 fish on Monday, 3 of these fell to our regular visitor, Charlie McGhee, with the best around 15lbs. Successful fly for Charlie was a Willie Gunn conehead. Tony Jones also took a nice 10lb cock fish (pictured below) - whilst the tale ended happily for the returned fish, the same could not be said for the tip section of his Sage TCR - warranty claim pending! The successful tactic (until the rod snapped) was a Sage 8123-4 TCR with Vision Ace intermediate/S2 head with a small Cascade double. A further fish was caught by local fisher Graham Dea, though we have no further details to hand.

10lb cock fish with 5 piece Sage rod.....

Levels have settled so far this week - with the water sitting around 1' above summer level. This is a good height, fish will have stopped in the pools and it also means not having to rely too much on big rods, heavy sinking lines and flies.

Fishing Availability

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Update for W/E 7/11/10

The heavy rain of last weekend and the early part of this last week has meant that the upper river beats have now started to see good numbers of fish caught. Wednesday saw six fish caught (see previous blog entry), two good size salmon were caught on Thursday, six fish on Friday and three on Saturday. Of particular note was that all three of Saturday's fish along with three of those caught the previous day were taken by Iain Bain. Not bad going for two day's work!

Iain, pictured with a fish caught last month.

6 fish today

With the water running at over 3 feet, but falling slowly, 6 fish were reported off the beat today. Nigel Griffiths took 3 fish, best at 15lbs and his fellow rod, Geoff Badlands, managed 2 fish, best 6lbs. One further fish was reported but we do not have any more details. The fish were all reported as fresh, with many fish running. This bears out the fact that fish can most certainly be caught on fly in high water at Cardrona. Prospects now look excellent providing no further rain arrives.

October Review

Last year saw us catching more fish in October than we did in November. Hopefully this year will prove to be very different as, due to the lack of rain, we've only caught 10 salmon in the last month compared to the 41 captured in the same period last year. Of those 10 fish, 6 were taken in the last 3 days of October and that bodes well for the coming month. The heavy rain forecast for today will also improve prospects in the longer term. In contrast to the salmon numbers, sea trout returns continue to be better than last year with 19 for the season so far.

Yesterday saw our biggest salmon of the season caught so far; a coloured cock fish of approximately 17-18lbs being released by Brian Davidson.


Iain Bain also returned 2 smaller salmon yesterday to add to the 9lber he caught on Friday.

It was interesting also to meet Paul Young and Mike Shepley yesterday as both anglers fished Cardrona in their formative years. They are pictured below alongside some of Cardrona's regulars.