Summer time!

 Andrew Williamson with yet another cracker from the Mill Pool, Carlogie


With the spring run behind us we are now looking forward to the start of the Summer fishing, even today the river has dropped down to under 1ft on the gauge, so now it's full floating lines, long leaders and small doubles. But if you fish with me you'll need heavy sinkers as well!! Because I beleive if they wont come up for the fly, you have to go down to the fish, so what if you lose a few flies, it's worth it!!

           Franc N Snaeldas tied on doubles-can't tie enough of them!!

Last week saw the biggest run of fish so far this year, hopefully more will have moved in over the weekend and we can build on the good spring catches we've had so far, last week saw a mixture of fresh and old fish being caught but they were certainly in the mood for the fly!

Best Spring Beat!!!

Lars Terkildsen with a fish from Commonty

Well thats the spring season over and it's turned out quite good!! However, this has been the hardest spring I have ever had, the conditions have been difficult to say the least! We lost 9 days in February due to grue which was impossilble to fish in, March was the hottest on record with Aboyne breaking the highest temperature ever recorded in Scotland for  March, the river dropped to 7" on the gauge and we had a water temperature of 55F, April saw more settled conditions but fish were still hard to catch, lots of them had fungus on them due to the drop in water temperature.

                 Tony Wheeler playing a 19lber in the Village pool

May arrived and so did the snow!! The temperature dropped and it was like fishing in March! However, this gave the hills a much needed covering of snow which is still melting into the river. In all my years as a Ghillie I've never seen snow fall so late in May, this did the trick though as new fish entered the river and flew past the bottom beats and decided to stop at the Ballogie beats! Carlogie did very well and yesterday the rods fished as hard as they could to catch the 2 fish required to beat last years total. Unfortunatly they only managed to get 1 - well done to Neil McGown from East Haugh Hotel, Pitlochry for getting 1 from Alan's pool last night this fish brought the total catch for the month of may to 70 equaling last years total.

            Another nice fish caught by Andrew Williamson at Carlogie


After looking through the catch figures, Ballogie was the top beat on the river with a total catch of 136, Carlogie came 3rd with a total of 113, while Commonty almost managed to hit its 5 year average with a total of 44. While most beats struggled to catch fish, the Ballogie beats consistently caught fish all through the spring, I'm very proud of all my fishermen who battled some really atrocious weather and river conditions at times to achieve these numbers, It's also satisfiying to see fish being caught in some of the new pools we have made - Alan's pool and Fraser's pool have produced good numbers of fish but these pools are still to be further improved in the winter.

Commonty has had the largest fish at 25lbs
Below are the figures for all 3 beats, have a look at them it makes for some interesting reading!

Commonty Fish Catches

Salmon & Grilse

Year	'07	'08	'09	'10	'11	Average	'12
Feb	7	5	5	5	2	4.8	14
Mar	8	8	13	4	11	8.8	4
Apr	7	15	9	22	22	15.0	13
May	6	11	9	25	29	16.0	13
Jun	3	5	11	13	12	8.8	0
Jul	15	7	13	9	16	12.0	0
Aug	9	19	14	29	35	21.2	0
Sep	11	18	9	32	22	18.4	0
Oct	0	21	24	23	5	14.6	0
Total	66	109	107	162	154	119.6	44

Carlogie Fish Catches

Salmon & Grilse

Year	'07	'08	'09	'10	'11	Average	'12
Feb	8	8	7	6	6	7.0	7
Mar	17	12	8	9	15	12.2	14
Apr	13	25	20	15	55	25.6	22
May	14	56	33	49	70	44.4	70
Jun	2	16	42	23	45	25.6	0
Jul	15	11	34	23	40	24.6	0
Aug	42	39	36	50	48	43.0	0
Sep	28	40	31	49	49	39.4	0
Oct	0	23	49	46	58	35.2	0
Total	139	230	260	270	386	257.0	113

Ballogie Fish Catches

Salmon & Grilse

Year	'07	'08	'09	'10	'11	Average	'12
Feb	15	10	28	13	21	17.4	21
Mar	20	23	19	13	21	19.2	29
Apr	24	34	25	33	64	36.0	42
May	13	30	43	42	50	35.6	44
Jun	11	20	38	20	41	26.0	0
Jul	13	12	31	30	46	26.4	0
Aug	24	18	41	45	46	34.8	0
Sep	40	39	70	65	61	55.0	0
Oct	0	34	90	44	70	47.6	0
Total	160	220	385	305	420	298.0	136

Big run of fish!!

                                    Beauty from Ballogie

Well catches have improved this week with a good run of new fish which have stirred up some of the resident fish as well. Ballogie and Carlogie are doing well but Commonty doesn't seem to be holding fish, which is strange as they have resident fish in most of the pools.

     One of 4 fish caught by Andrew Williamson at Carlogie yesterday

With only 1 day remaining of the spring season I hope that we finish with a big day tomorrow, we are still chasing numbers and hope to beat last years total for May at Carlogie, conditions couldn't be more perfect with good river levels and cloudy skies and lots of fish!!!

I will do a complete round up of the Spring catches on Friday when I gather all the details of what has been caught and will post a review of the spring season.

100th fish from Carlogie

                              Back to carry on it's journey

Carlogie landed it's 100th fish of the season this week which also coincided with the first Sea trout being caught from the beat, Carlogie was top beat on the river again this week, which considering the conditions was a great achievement, well done to John Coutts and his party for getting up early and fishing very late but this was the only way to catch fish in the bright conditions.

           The 18lber caught by Chris Smith, helped by Grandson Will.

With only 4 days left of the spring we are still chasing numbers, Ballogie only need 2 to beat the 5 year average and Carlogie have already beaten the 5 year average but we still need 11 to beat last years superb total of 70 fish for May, conditions this week look a little better with colder daytime temperatures forecast, so we will hopefully have a great end to the spring run.

Costa Del Dee!!

                                 Superb fish from Ballogie.

It's proving difficult this week due to the huge change in temperature we've seen on Deeside, the water temperature was 49f on Monday but by tuesday evening it had risen to 61.5f which is the fastest rise i've ever seen! The daytime temperature also rocketed with a high yesterday of 24C which in turn melted the snow we had last week and the river has risen to over 2ft 4". The fish seem unable to cope with the changing conditions and have just switched off!! The only positive thing i've seen is a few Sea trout have entered the river and are showing in the pools, this evening should see some better conditions, as the sun sets and the air cools we may get some sport, Fingers crossed!

Ladies Day

                              A wee bar of Silver from Commonty

Chris Smith had a day to remember today, she hooked 3 large fish and landed 2 of them! She had 1 at 16lbs and 1 at 18lbs from the top Gannets pool before 10 O'clock this morning, then she hooked into something much larger, the fish took in the Top Gannets and after a great fight decided to leave the pool and head for the Middle Gannets, were again after fighting it again it then ran out down to the Lower Gannets, all this took place over a 20 minite period, the fish then decided it didn't like the Lower Gannet and ran back up the other side of the pool heading upstream, trying to get back to the Middle Gannet and the leader snapped!! Somebody will hopefully land a big fish this week, I hope it's us!!
I should get pictures of the fish when she gets back home.

                             And a thumper from Ballogie                      

250th fish

                          From the Lower Inchbare, Ballogie

We had the 250 Salmon of the season yesterday from the Ballogie Beats and it was caught by none other than the Laird! This is our first great milestone of this season and I hope we can go on building on this great accievement. The Lairds party finished with 14 for the week, with the total catch being 20 from the 3 beats, not too bad considering the weather conditions and the rising and falling river. As I write this we have had a daytime temperature of 14 degrees, so I can see the river rising overnight due to snow melt which will again unsettle the fish for tomorrow.

                                 Solid Silver in the net