Anything goes!

I've never been an angler who limits myself or gets snobby when it comes to different styles of fishing. Fresh or salt. Day or night. Shore or boat. Traditional or unorthodox. Bait, lure or fly. I don't care really! As a species hunting angler, I'll use whatever method I think will be most effective and is at my disposal in any given situation. I may enjoy some types of fishing more than others but as long as I'm catching fish, I’m usually happy. When I braved the cold easterly winds and accompanying showers on Tuesday, to visit Drumtassie Trout Fishery in the afternoon for a few hours, I fished on its fly fishing ponds and went with an approach that would probably boil the blood of your average traditional fly fisherman! 

A single puddle bug cat, fished under an Air-Lock sight indicator.

To my mind it’s more akin to float fishing, but it was certainly very effective. The colour of the puddle bug cat didn’t seem to matter too much either. On three different colour variations I had eight trout in six hours. A few more were hooked and managed to successfully eject my not so natural offerings. All bar one were rainbow trout, the odd one out being my first blue trout of the year. Technically, a rainbow trout as well, just one with a genetic mutation that is responsible for the colouration difference. 

Blue trout usually have fewer spots than a standard rainbow. As their name suggests they’re also a blue colour across their backs. This one looked a deeper shade of blue from above when it was upright in the water. It looks more like a green trout in the photo above!

A bog standard rainbow trout. Looks nicer than the blue variant in my opinion. 

All things considered, it was not a bad little session in less than ideal conditions. It’s not my favourite method to fish or type of venue to visit, and if I’m honest the only reason I’d visited the fishery again so soon was in the hope that I’d get lucky and catch a brook trout, which I'd failed to do. I guess I just can’t switch off species hunting mode, but as long as I'm able to get out over the coming winter months and catch a few fish that’s fine!

Tight lines, Scott..

Nothing's gonna stop me now?

Having hit my 2023 species hunting target of two hundred species whilst on holiday on Crete, and by the end of the holiday having reached two hundred and twenty one species this year, I’ve been in two minds about what I should do between now and the end of the year. Maybe I should think about taking a well-earned break? I have been fishing a lot this year and do feel ever so slightly "burnt out"! Maybe I should take my foot off the gas, just relax a bit and enjoy some fishing without focussing on adding further species to my tally. Maybe I should make a serious effort to keep trying to add more?

Last Tuesday, I decided to head to Drumtassie Trout Fishery, with a couple of mates, Brian and Ryan, to hopefully catch my first rainbow trout of 2023. Perhaps catching another species this year would give me some indication of how motivated I was to keep species hunting. Lazily fishing a nugget buzzer three feet under an indicator, and letting the surface ripples do most of the work, it didn't take me long at all to achieve that goal. I hooked five and landed three after a couple of hours.

Not a bad looking fish for a stocked rainbow trout.

I then turned my attention to catching a brook trout, another species I've not caught this year. Switching to a sinking line, I tied on my favourite Ally McCoist lure, and spent some time fishing this close to the bottom. This didn’t produce any fish, so early in the afternoon I left the lads to continue fly fishing, and headed over to Drumtassie Coarse Fishery to try and tempt a barbel or a small Siberian sturgeon from their large coarse pond. Both would have been new Scottish species for me and also additions to my 2023 species tally. By this point the cold easterly wind had started to pick up a fair bit, and it soon got very cold. The fishing was tough. Float ledgering a whole dendrobaena worm over some feed pellets for three hours only produced two small ide.    

Greedy little swine!

Before I knew it, the sun had started to set, and it was time to call it a day and head back to pick up Brian and Ryan. I'd added one species to my 2023 tally. Being honest I’m still not sure what I’m going to do between now and the end of 2023. Had I somehow managed to catch a brook trout, a barbel, a Siberian sturgeon or two or even all three of them, I may have taken that as some kind of sign to push on with a determined effort to catch a lot more species this year. There are still quite a few species that I could target that I’ve not already caught this year in both freshwater and saltwater. As it gets colder catching some of them may become more difficult. If it warms up slightly again I might revisit the two Drumtassie fisheries again. I also intend to target grayling and zander over the coming months, two species I've not caught for a few years. I think I will keep trying to catch more species this year, I can't help myself! I'll just do it in a much more relaxed, pressure free, manner, with no target number in mind!

Tight lines, Scott.

Striking gold.

So, throughout August, back to Drumtassie Trout Fishery I went repeatedly, to try to catch my first golden trout. As I've said before, it's probably my least favourite type of venue and style of fishing, so I was keen to try and get one quickly. Six visits later, I finally managed to catch two of the super spooky brightly coloured fish! The number that swim up to your fly and inspect it before turning away at the very last second is incredible. After dropping to 4lb tippet and giving it a going over with Fuller's Mud, a suspender buzzer and a white moth were the surface flies that finally tempted the two golden trout I caught.

The golden trout. A very colourful and very frustrating fish!

My 100th species from Scottish venues! I was over the moon reaching this milestone! There was one thing in the back of my mind though. Niggling away. Corbin's sandeel. I've caught a couple of large sandeel that I suspect may have been Corbin's sandeel during the last few years. They can be distinguished from the greater sandeel because they lack the dark spot on the side of the snout and instead have a dark chin.

I'm not 100% sure that this is a Corbin's sandeel.

This, I'm sure, is a greater sandeel.

I'm still not confident that I've got the identification correct though, and as the Corbin's sandeel was included in my Scottish species tally total of one hundred, I decided I wanted to catch one more Scottish species, so I could say with absolute certainty I'd reached my goal.

Tight lines, Scott.

Not going up there again!

Following my failure to catch a "wild" brook trout, I wasn't too keen on repeating the hellish climb up to the remote highland loch again in a hurry. Luckily, Drumtassie Trout Fishery in West Lothian have stocked some aggressive brook trout into their fly fishing ponds, so I headed there at the end of July to strip some lures in an attempt to catch one. Nowhere near as dramatic or romantic as climbing up to a remote hill loch to catch a wild one, but needs must. Within the first hour of the session, my yellow dancer lure had been taken by a couple of rainbow trout before I got lucky and managed to catch my target.

Easy enough and more importantly only a short walk from the car.

I'm not very good at casting a fly line and if I'm honest, fly fishing at commercial venues is also probably my least favourite way to fish. That said, I spent the rest of the day trying to catch my first ever golden trout. They seemed more difficult to catch than standard rainbow trout, of which they are a genetic variation. I think being so visible, they've had every fly conceivable put in front of their faces and are a bit more cautious in their meal choices as a result. With plenty of golden trout stocked into the fishery's ponds, I resigned myself to the fact that I'd have to keep returning until I eventually got my first golden trout.

Tight lines, Scott.