Week Commencing 25th April 2022

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Afternoon all from a sunny Elgin

A fickle week of weather again, cold to start with but warming up as the week progressed. The river has been settled for another week and indeed we are seeing levels approaching that of summer and we are not even there yet!!

Matters are still dragging on in Ukraine with no sign of an end to the conflict, too many people being displaced as a result of this and this instability is something we do not like to see. We can only but hope the conflict ends soon.

Elsewhere in the news this week Eve Muirhead continued to have the season like no other winning the World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship at the first time of asking with a played 11, won 11 game record. Eve and team mate Bobbie Lammie, have again done British and indeed Scottish curling proud, adding to the European and Olympic success of this year. Definitely contender for Sports Personality of the year and Team of the Year.

Right which direction will be go in this week? Lets go upstream.

Fochabers Angling Association nearly got off the mark this week but Andy Milne lost touch with his fish yesterday but I am sure they will have a fish soon.

Gordon Castle/Brae Water landed 4 for the week, pulling more and losing some too according to David Buley. Two fish landed on the Castle water and two on Upper Brae. A good number of fish were seen too, so hopefully fish will start to slow down and hold in the beats. Well done to Chris Blake on landing his first Spey fish with his last cast!!

Donald Mateer and his fish from Little Ewe
Fiona with her cracking fish
Chris Blake with his first Spey fish
David Mateer’s fish from Little Ewe

Orton landed a few fish at the start of the week but it went dead after Wednesday reports Andy Gunn.

Mark Melville at Delfur advises that they had another decent week in to double figures again. Largest 19lb with some great quality fish again plus fish caught every day for the Colin Jones party. Mostly sea liced fish as you’d expect at this time of year. Nice to have a good spread of catches up and down the beat with all the pools fishing at this good height for us.

Colin Jones and the “ghillies”
Colin Jones with a second fish
Graham Bone with a bar of silver
Neil Menneer and a stunning fish
Richard Legge with his 19lb fish
Richard and the “ghillies” getting a shower on release

Rothes had another good week landing 9 for week according to head ghillie Robbie Stronach. They did not see a lot of fish but were hooking fish instead, just what we want.

Robbie with Michael French’s fish from the town road
Richard Doyle from the Junction
Richard Doyle again from Bluestone
Lindsey Pott’s fish from the Geantree
Gavin Wiggins- Davis and his Creeky fish

Arndilly Head Ghillie, Euan Reid confirms that another good week was had at Arndilly with 14 salmon up to 15 lb with the majority again sea liced. Arni Baldursson got us started with a 10lb fish from Reids on Monday morning and continued catching through the week averaging a fish a day. John Tor Juliusson had 3 including a 15lb and an 8lb in a morning session in the tail of long pool. William Daniel had 2 at the start of the week but contacted many more after that but they wouldn’t stick. Others to score were Gimmi Gunnarsson, Ingo Asgiersson and Helga Hrund Gudmunsdottir.
There are a few fish holding in some of the pools now and with water temperatures around the 50°f mark most of our fish were caught on floating lines.

Arni with a superb spey springer
The fight is on!!
Helga with silver in the sunlight
No words needed
Jon with a silver selfie
Another silver selfie
I need a chew of Euan’s beard!!
More silver from Arndilly
Euan doing the necessary
Bar of silver
Will Daniel and one of his fish
Will Daniel and fish 2

At Easter Elchies, Orn Sigurhansson reports summer water level on thé gauge and a build up of resident fish in a number of pools. 6 fish landed for the week including a number of fish caught on single hook flies.

A big congratulations to Thomas Robertson as his capture of that phenomenal fish a few weeks ago has won him the Fish of the Month in Trout and Salmon, watch out for it in the latest issue.

Colin Maclaren, Red Craigs

Heading upstream, Craigellachie had a quiet week with just 2 fish landed reports Dougie Ross. Jak Young being one of the lucky captors.

Jake Young with a nice fish

Aberlour Angling Club had one fish this week for Jim Seivwright according to Kenny Davies. However Tuesday saw many fish running through, they were everywhere and some big fish as well but they would not take anything. Fish still showing on Wednesday as well but not as many. Kenny advises he has not seen so many fish for a long time. As an aside Kenny had fun with the brown trout when we had a hatch of olives managed four, the river here is now very low, need some rain soon.

Wester Elchies had four for their week, two of which were landed by Iain Ogden according to Malcolm Newbould.

Iain Ogden fish 1
Iain Ogden fish 2

Kinermony had a very quiet week according to David Brand with only a few pulls from fish, however a good number of fish seen.

Our next stopping point on the upstream journey is Knockando Home Beat where they landed 4 for the week reports Archie Baillie. Again as in other beats a good number of fish being seen but not willing to play ball and fall for the fly swinging past their nose.

Bonny fish
Spey silver

Euan Clive’s Phones beat at Knockando had at least one fish for the week, Dr Sandy Scott following up his success at Upper Brae last Saturday with another lovely spring fish.

Dr Sandy Scott with his Phones prize

Castle Grant had a very similar week to the previous one with fish being seen, caught and lost on all the beat advises Head Ghillie Simon Crozier. Roy Thomson was rewarded with a nice 7 lb fish from the Manse, Tim Browns party on beat 1 had a good few encounters that did not stick but had fish from the Dipper and Congash burn. Rémy Gstalder had a lovely fresh 8lb fish from Pollowick. Jack Crozier had a nice fish from Dunbar.

Jack Crozier, Dunbar Beat 3
Bob Ford, 8lbs Beat 1
Bonny fish from Beat 3

On the Grantown Water they landed for the week. Long term visitor George Oliver had a good week with 3 fly caught fish to 10lb.

George Oliver with one of his three fish

At Abernethy only one fish to report for the week, a 11lbs fish to Tina Grant which is her first ever salmon, well done Tina.

Good to see that the fish are still pushing through the system, although the river level is low, indeed at summer levels in some places and a bit of rain might be needed to freshen it up. The quality of the fish is superb, wonderfully shaped and proportioned and almost guaranteed a good scrap if you get a hold of one.

The week ahead is looking settled, with temperatures into the teens but no rain in the forecast. We will need to wait and see what the week brings us.

Tight lines to those out and about

Sandy

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