Cats and Dogs

As I write, it has been raining heavily now for 4 days and nights - no emergency weather warnings here - we just put up with it !

With all that water, and the ground and hills now saturated, the only place for it to go is into the Rivers burns and Lochs. At this moment therefore, the River Aline is about 4-5 ft above normal, and fairly thundering down - not quite burst its banks fully, though it has done on the Top Beat. The result is that until things settle down, the river will be unfishable. Forecast is good though, with the rain expected to stop tonight I expect that by tomorrow afternoon/evening the River will be fishable again.

Conditions up to the rains have been variable and up until Thursday the river was fairly low. The rains picked things up a bit, and by Saturday I had reports of about 6 fish, all fresh taken from the River and one nice grilse of about 7lb from Arienas. Lochs have been fishing steadily, but with a variable wind direction, and flat calms on some days, it has sometimes been difficult. Fish have nevertheless been caught, though apart from the salmon mentioned, nothing of the size I would expect at this time of year.

With Stalking activity at its height on Ardtornish, not many have ventured up to the hill lochs. No reports of any catches therefore, and as I said last time, if fishing the hill lochs you must check with the Estate Office first to check for stalking activity !! If you do fish the hill lochs however, I would advise fishing the top end of each one, and sometimes the feeder burns where fish will now be starting to congregate.

A busy week next week, and I have booked 1 day for myself - lets hope the weather is kind !!