Fresh Off The Morning Tide

[exerod]

I get the feeling it's going to be one of those years. Finally got a fish yesterday, about a mile up from the estuary.





















Ah well, I can't usually hook these buggers on bait let alone fly.

Andy

[robmason]

It's a cracker. Do they eat well?

[robmason]

Oops, I thought all those silvery things chasing my mepps where sea trout

[jt]

Ahem. Nice grayling.

[exerod]

jt said:

Ahem. Nice grayling.

I know it's not the best photo but grayling?

[madkeen]

He's pulling your leg anyone can see it's a bream.

[salmondan]

Looks a bit eel ish to me ;D.

[exerod]

madkeen said:

He's pulling your leg anyone can see it's a bream.

Exactly ;D

[Fruin]

Exerod,
If you can locate these fish at night in the estuary or lower reaches, they can be great fun on a fly rod. We have some big ones that come into the lower reaches of the Leven. They grab the fly on every cast as long as you don't spook them. The problem is getting them to stick, but when you do, they go like a train.

[exerod]

fruin said:

They grab the fly on every cast as long as you don't spook them.

How strange, I've fished over thousands of mullet in South coast rivers at night when sea trout fishing and never hooked one. I have only hooked three by day on fly, the one above on a three inch tube is the only one ever to stay on. I have had them follow 4 inch collie dogs and size 14 stoats tails on many occasion but they almost never get hold. Also they cant be spooked in the rivers I fish, you can walk along the banks and poke them with the rod tip but they just amble off a yard or so and carry on munching algae! Down here in some rivers they will run up to the first weir or obstruction, I know one small river where they get 5 or 6 miles up from the tidal water.

Andy

[ibm59]

fruin said:

Exerod,
If you can locate these fish at night in the estuary or lower reaches, they can be great fun on a fly rod. We have some big ones that come into the lower reaches of the Leven. They grab the fly on every cast as long as you don't spook them. The problem is getting them to stick, but when you do, they go like a train.

Way back in the mists of time , when seatrout were quite common on the Clyde coast , one of the best ways of getting one was to cast your spinner/fly in amongst a travelling shoal of mullet.The mullet would show v'ing and swirling as they moved along close to shore and catching seatrout amongst them happened too often to be a coincidence.
Anybody else had the same experience?

[Fruin]

exerod said:

fruin said:

They grab the fly on every cast as long as you don't spook them.

How strange, I've fished over thousands of mullet in South coast rivers at night when sea trout fishing and never hooked one. I have only hooked three by day on fly, the one above on a three inch tube is the only one ever to stay on. I have had them follow 4 inch collie dogs and size 14 stoats tails on many occasion but they almost never get hold. Also they cant be spooked in the rivers I fish, you can walk along the banks and poke them with the rod tip but they just amble off a yard or so and carry on munching algae! Down here in some rivers they will run up to the first weir or obstruction, I know one small river where they get 5 or 6 miles up from the tidal water.

Andy

Andy, it seems that the fish in the Leven have a different temprament to the mullet in your kneck of the woods. Our fish are very easily spooked during the day, and I cannot get them to look at the fly. At night, they are less easily spooked and only too eager to grab anything from a size 14 to a size 2. I have found a peter ross variant and a stoats tail variant dressed on size 4 - 8 aberdeen hooks to their liking. However, hook up rate must be about 1 in 30. It still provides a nice distraction when the sea trout are absent.
There are some very large mullet that enter the lower reaches of the Leven and they fairly test a 10' 7wt.

[barkingcollie]

Have they made it up to the Endrick yet ?

[Fruin]

Not yet, but fingers crossed

[albyn73]

Try using a white coloured fly,something that looks like a bit of white bread, JP hooked a mullet down the bottom end one day, and 3 times it had him down to the backing, before he realised it was a mullet, estimated 8-10lbs it had him going. Thinking it was a big sea trout, and that was what he was fishing, a small whitish fly, you know he's fishing for salmon or sea trout and this is what he lands. Oh he was using a single hander and that made it all the more exciting.......