Pretty much as soon as we were able to, I went fishing!
During the whole lockdown my life pretty much did not change, it only got around 10 times harder. The family got up in the morning, got dressed – my wife went to work in the hospital and I dropped the kids off at the school on my way to work in social work. The end of the day was just the reverse.
It was incredibly stressful. Usually during stressful times the only release that I get is fishing (aside from kid time) – this was obviously not the case here. I am not going to blab on about it however this whole pandemic for me started a week or so before everyone else. I was called in to meetings with some very sensible people and we were read out numbers of infections over the coming weeks and the numbers of people that would likely die. A likely roadmap was given to us and we started to prepare. Everyone else’s life went on as normal – I fell out with Paul and Alan because they were not taking it seriously enough and they were still wanting to go ahead with the Kelvin opening ceremony – nobody seemed to get it. My work ramped up and usually calm people started to panic. I would go on facebook and see folk laughing about going fishing, that it was allowed because it was part of their daily exercise. Meanwhile I looked at death numbers in care homes and had to make the decision whether someone should stay at home or be admitted. If people had taken the lockdown seriously would this still have happened I wondered – probably would have helped people tell me who are way more intelligent than me.
Also the numbers of people that have been taken advantage of is still growing – people stealing money off someone’s granny because she is scared to go to the shops is deplorable but you would be appalled by how often it happens.
At least the weather was sunny during that time – it would have been harder to cope with if the sun did not shine.
However, you are not here to read about my shitty work life, you are here to read about fish. So let us begin….
I do not have many photos or stories just now – I have had a few trips to the sea loch for Sea Trout, I have certainly caught a few however not in the numbers that I would expect. I have been up to my Pond and caught a fair few overwintered stocked trout.
They fought like utter fiends and I did feel a little guilty as I killed, gutted and then cooked them on the BBQ.
But only a little bit.
The serious fishing started on the big river – and one of the days that I took off work ended up being bright and sunny. It was still good to be out. My next day out on the big river was better – I went with Alex. On the way their, there was torrential downpours and the day remained overcast. Alex gave me his nymphing rod and I scraped the bottom and aside from a stonking grayling I did not do well.
Alex as usual caught his monsters and I caught my trout on dry flies – it is what I had been waiting on all year.
Later in the week I had an evening session on the Kelvin. I started down at the Botanics however the park was totally hoaching with dog walkers and other folk.
I texted John Wilson to see if he wanted to meet up for a chat – he had blocked me on facebook as I guess he felt attacked after my last post gained so much attention on facebook. Someone sent me a screenshot of a conversation where it was inferred I orchestrated people coming out of the woodwork in support of the committee.
I wish I had that kind of clout to be honest.
He blanked me anyway, or maybe I had the wrong number.
When someone threw a ball into the water for their dog next to me I decided to retreat to the car. I travelled up river and after fishing for an hour I had nothing to show for it – well, I had caught one trout however I wanted more from the Kelvin.
I travelled even further upriver and finally found my rising trout – I caught a half dozen around 3/4lb. Their rises were the smallest dimples on the surface and they took micro flies at dusk. I left when I coud no longer see my fly on the water.
A bit of a calamity then occured however if you want to know what it is you can ask me in person – just remind me!
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