With reasonably settled weather for most of last week, the river remained on the low side. It wasn’t until the latter half that we saw significant cloud cover and some rain. This lifted the water levels by a few inches on Saturday.
River heights – 4in-7in(+/- 2in)
Water Temps – 55-60F or 13-15C
Air temps – 10-20C – sunny/clouds – some rain.
For the tourists, the blue sky days are a god-send but for the anglers, not so much – but they do help produce nice photos – Fiddoch Mouth pool-Easter Elchies in glorious sunshine.
It won’t come as any surprise that the lower river saw the best of the action last week. Fresh fish continued to enter the system, but with the low river levels, they tended to move much slower upstream. The majority of the catch was still multi-sea winter salmon but the grilse numbers are starting to increase.
The biggest reported fish was landed on the Easter Elchies beat by ghillie – Orn Sigurhasson. It took a size 12 black shrimp fly in the Fiddoch Mouth Pool.
The middle river also saw some nice fish landed, including this magnificent double figure trophy sea trout caught by Des Dunlop on the Knockando beat.
Some nice salmon were caught also.
Catch Summary
Upper River – Limited news but 6 reported (no figures from the three main upper beats)
Middle River – Over 30 fish reported
Lower River – Over 100 fish reported
Average salmon size – approx 10lb. Biggest fish reported 22lbs. Grilse proportion – 20%
As we near the end of June I thought I’d share some of the highlights from our spring fishing this season. You can catch it on our Youtube channel –
Other news
Coming to the SFB website very soon is our new water monitoring station.
Just recently installed on the Easter Elchies beat, this will provide both the board and anglers with some very useful data e.g temperature and PH value. A live feed to the website should allow us to show this data real-time. A big thanks to Callum Robertson-owner of the Easter Elchies beat for his support and contribution to this project.
Looking ahead
Another settled and warm week is forecast. River levels will remain on the low side and I guess some unsociable hours will be required at times to intercept a salmon. All part of a mid-summer salmon fishing experience on Speyside.
As always, tightlines to all.
John.
1 thought on “Week Commencing June 21st – A good week for lower beats”
Hi, I hope to fish the spey mid September could you recommend some flys, Would be much appreciated.