Border Trout

Saturday 2nd May. After being given a recommendation to visit a little known reservoir reputed for its brown trout and which is rarely fished I took the opportunity to travel down to the Borders.

My friend's Tam and Scott and I arrived in Galashiels early on Saturday morning and had a hearty breakfast in the local supermarket restaurant after which we drove to St Boswells to pick up our permits for the day's fishing.

However after enquiring about out permits the owner of the outdoor shop informed us that he couldn’t help us as he didn’t deal with the fishing on this particular water and directed us to a newsagent in a nearby village.

However on arrival at the said shop they didn’t deal with the fishing either. Nevertheless they knew people who did so therefore the newsagent forwarded a phone call to tell a local farmer that we were on our way over to get permission to fish.

With the directions to the farm in hand we set off once again this time to get the permits.

We eventually arrived at the farm after travelling on never ending twisting country roads.

We thought we were never going to get away from the farmer as he didn’t half like to have blether but ultimately we got what we desired and were off at last to the reservoir which we reached soon after.

It was bitterly cold with a brisk east wind blowing across the reservoir, not idea fly fishing conditions to say the least; however we had gone to a fair amount of trouble to eventually fish here so we soon strung our rods and tied on our flies and were soon off casting into various areas of the water.

Tam was first into a fish and as it turned out the best trout of the day, which was between ¾lb and 1lb mark which foiled with a Bibio. It was a lovely fish. However, Tam kept it for the pot. Personally I think he should have returned such a beautiful creature.

I was next to hook up. I caught three nice trout however they were not quite in the same size bracket as Tam’s. However it was very pleasing indeed to catch a trio of trout especially when all were fooled with my favourite and most successful pattern the Kate McLaren.

Scott took some considerable time to eventually get his one and only trout which he caught with a mallard and claret and was pretty much the same size as the trout which I caught.

Tam caught a second just before we packed up and headed back home.

It was a lovely piece of water to fish set in a lovely picturesque setting surrounded by fine rolling hills and farms.

Conditions were not the best and as a result we never saw much fish activity on the surface but we agreed that this reservoir has the potential to be superb when the weather is more favourable.

So with that in mind we agreed that we would like to return in the not so distant future.