Ruffell in the Riffle

Had a great afternoon out on the river yesterday with my pal Sean Ruffell. I've fished with Sean many times but mostly on Islay for the wild loch browns on the many occasions that he visited the Islay. He's a huge fan of float tubing the lochs and of Islay single malt whiskies.

It was an overcast afternoon and a little cooler than it has been of late. The air temperature was around 14 degrees c. We soon started to see lots of fly life as we walked down the river and also started to see rises.

Eager to get on to the fish I was set up before Sean so thought I would have a cast to a spot where I had seen a large trout taking olives a couple of days before. I put on a new tapered leader with a Jingler tied to the business end.

I cast to about a foot above where I had seen the trout feeding and he walloped my jingler on the first cast.

We fished out the rest of the pool, missed a couple of slashy rises and decided to make our way back to the car to enjoy a dram (Caol Ila 2014 Islay Festival of Malt and Music limited edition the casks for which specially selected by yours truly), a cup of tea and some posh cake. I told Sean about the rest of the beat and where we should fish and then made our way to the upper stretch of the beat.

There were many hatches of olives coming off and the odd mayfly, all of which the trout were more than happy to feed on and the river was alive with rises.

I switched to a Fulling Mill Mayfly Flyine size 14 and started to attract rises.

In all we had 4 fish all around the 2.5lb mark. A splendid afternoon in good company. Things are really starting to warm up on the river now and before long there should be plenty of mayfly about.

Slainte

David

PS nice to see a pair of woodpeckers at the bird table in the fishermans car park today.