Week Commencing 13th June.

admin Latest 21st June 201613th, commencing, June, week

Well last week’s forecast was reasonably accurate, but perhaps the quantities of the rain was not emphasised enough. It rained on Tuesday into Wednesday and the river rose to over 2 meters or 6 feet if you prefer. Again the turbidity was poor. These weekly reports are getting a bit predictable, pictures of coloured water, and little graphs showing the rise(s). Next week is not dissimilar; there will be some heavy rain this evening, and in the morning then a dry afternoon and some more rain Tuesday evening. I am unsure whether the river will rise much but it should certainly not fall much. The tides peak mid week.

Avon levels

Spey at Aberlour

Spey Boat on the Yangtze.

Catches: It will be obvious that the week is pretty much split into three, Monday and Tuesday when catches were good, Wednesday and Thursday when catches were poor and then improving again as the river fell and cleared.

Gordon Castle had another good week with close to seventy fish landed. Thanks to Spey regular Alex Robertson for his pictures, head gillie Ian Tennant looking happy.

Alex Robertson Brae 3

Ian Tennant with Alex Robertson’s fish

Ian with another of Alex’s fish

Guess again!

Delfur also had another good week with over fifty landed. There was some excitement when a fin-clipped fish was landed, but at 8lbs it is unlikely to be a Tommore burn fish. A sample has been sent for DNA analysis so we should know something soon. But it is a timely reminder to keep looking for fin-clipped fish. As usual Mark is generous with his pictures.

Steve Smith Delfur

Sir Edward Mountain Delfur

A Silver Spey at work.

Rothes finished with thirty-five, or as Mike put it not bad for four days fishing.

Craigellachie ended just short of double figures.

Kinermony had eight. Wester Elchies managed fifteen. I hear Delagyle had a few including a big fish, unfortunately no details.

Carron had a bumper week, with thirty-one. Many thanks to Neil and Ian Borthwick and Brian Shaw for the pictures.

Neil Borthwick Carron

Ian Borthwick Carron

Brian Shaw Carron

Ian Borthwick with Brian Shaw’s grilse

I hear Laggan had a couple of good days towards the end of the week.

Grantown as expected with a lift in the water height had a good week finishing with over twenty-five. The seatrout numbers continue to increase and there were three this week over 6 lbs.

Roy MacGregor Lurg Grantown

Kinchurdy also fished well with a good number of both salmon and seatrout. Bobby Hall, as usual, has kept me supplied with plenty of photographs of his happy anglers.

Patrick Smith Kinchurdy

Janet Clark Kinchurdy

Janet again

And Again.

And yet again!

Andrew Miller Kinchurdy

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Week commencing 13th April 2015

admin Latest 21st April 201513th, 2015, April, commencing, week

It has been a wonderful week on Speyside, Inverness Caledonian Thistle have beaten Celtic in the semi final of the Scottish Cup! The weather was fine most of the week; although the rain in the west pushed the river up on Wednesday afternoon bringing a little turbidity. The river fell back the rest of the week and now sits at just over a foot. The tides peak early this week. The forecast for the coming week is for the fine settled weather to remain till the end of the week then some really heavy rain is forecast for the weekend, we will wait and see.

Catches: I hear there was a fish at Gordon Castle and that a few have been caught at Orton but I have no real details. Delfur had three on Tuesday afternoon and as usual Mark was kind enough to send me this picture of Robert Speakman.

Robert Speakman Collie Delfur

Mike Euan tells me they only landed a couple but lost about twice as many.

Michael Lambert Burnmouth Rothes

Craigellachie had their best week of the season with three landed.

Wester Elchies landed five with as many lost. Neill Sproull sent me this picture from the Boat Pool.

Neill Sproull Wester Elchies

The Norwegian party that were supposed to be fishing at Carron decided not to come, and I was delighted to be asked to fish for them. Although lightly fished we finished with four. There must have been a few fish about as Alan Williams managed to catch one from the Bridge Pool.

Another from Carron

Neil Borthwick Carron

Alan Williams’ fish Carron

Carron Pool

I hear that the Knockando beats also had some success but have no details. Chris Davies fished at Castle Grant last week and was kind enough to send me these photos when he returned home. Chris a regular on the Spey said, “With only three days on the river, I always wish we could have spent more time at Castle Grant, fabulous fishing and wonderful scenery. It seems like all of nature is coming alive; amongst many others, we saw golden eye ducks, crossbills, red shanks, curlews and a red squirrel and all in the company of Lionel Main, who as you can see from the picture has an uncanny knack of being on hand to help land a salmon – a perfect time in the Spey Valley!”

Lionel Main at work

Chris Davies Castle Grant.

Grantown also had a fish with local member Willie Laird landing an eight pound fish from the Long Pool on Thursday. Willie has also landed three early sea-trout in the past couple of weeks.

Can I just finish with a plea for the price of salmon flies to be reduced; this poor pensioner had to risk his life to rescue his.

Fly rescued!

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