So far I have managed to post everyday since starting this blog, after yesterdays posting I seriously thought what am I going to talk about tomorrow. On a Sunday when Formula One is on it is a case of get up, walk down the village & have a drink & scone in The Mill, walk home, have early lunch & sit until now watching the G.P.
Well at half six last night a mate in the village phoned & said “I am sitting out side you have got 5 minutes to go fishing with me or I won’t go either”. So on consulting SWMBO I got the nod to go. As Alan & I had already fished the main pond on our village club waters this week (you are only allowed to fish this water once a week), we had to go to Sarah’s Pond. Now this is a very small stretch of water, less than the size of a football pitch, way up in the hills & is a short but steep walk uphill from the main pond. The club stocked it with Brown Trout all just about a pound in weight two years ago, these have bred in the small burn that feeds it.
The pond is part of the Atholl Estate hydro scheme & is a header tank for our loch below, which takes the overflow down a very steep pipe to Blair Castle where they produce enough electricity to keep the castle going in the summer & lighting in the winter. Last winter we had some heavy storms & a vast majority of the Brown Trout went down to the lower loch in a flooded torrent off the hills & these trout are now being caught in the main loch, leaving only small ones in the top pond.
This of course meant we were only going up to the pond for a bit of catch & release fishing for the small 1/2 lb trout that had bred there. We both caught two of these fish each & thought & expected that to be the standard of the evening. Imagine my surprise when I saw this huge trout come up & suck my dry fly (that is one floating on the top to imitate an insect hatching off the water) . Now the pond at the moment is very weedy & with a barbless hook I was expecting to lose the fish before it got to the bank, but no, I hung onto it, called Alan over to net it. He picked up my net which promptly broke on the rim & Alan had to hold it together & somehow we managed to get it in. Before today my biggest Brown Trout was a 1. 1/2 lb one & on getting it home & weighing it , this one was Two pounds six ounces. So thanks Sarah’s Pond for giving me my blog for today. Picture below of the fish in a standard size sink at home.
