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All Year Round Angler - Or is a close season good for you?

Our February 2001 contribution from Bill Drew

God bless the grayling. Our silver chum has added four months to my fishing year. I now have various permissions to fish for grayling from December until April when the brownies become legal again. Until this year February was the cut off date as salmon came into season and grayling fishers were no longer welcome.

But is such a long fishing year a good thing?

Three arguments against continuing fishing come to mind.

I should be leaving the critters to get some peace.
I acknowledge this but I am weak and trouble so few of them.

I no longer have time to churn out some stock flies for the new season while waiting for the starter's pistol in April.
Tough I would rather be fishing even in rod ring freezing weather.

I might become jaded with year round angling.
"Aye right", as my 15 year old son would say on most topics, conveying total sarcasm. (A Scottish accent assists the delivery).

In addition I can fish in October for sea trout because nobody else is prepared to waste their time. That leaves December as a fishing desert. Now I have been reading about fly fishing for pike in December and big Tony did say that he knew the very place. Incorrigible or what!

Since January and between floods grayling have been on my mind.

I object to the "Lady of the Stream " nickname. I have used it myself but come on, this is no lady. A tough old boot or well-honed athlete perhaps but Lady? No way. I tried my luck on a private beat without joy and then joined the annual Earlston Angling Competition in mid January. This year as well as the normal meticulous organisation and 50 plus entrants a new catch and release rule was welcomed by all. Braining around 150 grayling on a single day had led to scenes which looked like some mid Victorian photographs of slaughter. This year 154 good (many over 2 lbs) grayling were released back into the Tweed.

This year I topped my first attempt last year and managed a blank. I had an excuse in the draw. Apparently 40 fish had been landed and released on my allocated beat 3 days earlier in the week. I did not know this when I encountered the local sage as I returned fishless to my car at the end of the day. "How many?", he enquired. "None", my slightly frosty response. "Well is that no incredible? The day is perfect and the water is ideal. If there was one stretch where I would have thought anyone would have caught a fish it was this one. I am stuck…".

With this he was scanning me and my kit against a visual checklist. Rod… line… and so on until the inevitable conclusion. Half wit and incompetent buffoon was the clear summary etched across his face.

Encouraged I shuffled back to the delights of the Black Bull, a cracking good old fashioned homely fisherman's boozer with brilliant piping hot soup to boot.

The next week I did break my 2001 duck with my best ever grayling of 2lbs 5oz on my own fly in semi darkness on the Yair stretch. The river was just off spate and I pinched a lead shot a foot above a single bug to get depth. The fly I call a Sinklair after a fishing mate. Size 12 copper bead , tungsten under pale orange Lureflash dubbing with a red copper wire rib. The big grayling loved it and fought like no "Lady". On the surface , bull dogging, short and long surges for over 15 minutes on 4lb line and against a raging current the fish was a tiger. Glancing around to ensure I was unobserved I let out a whoop. It was then that I realised that I still believed in fishing seasons and that 2001 had just begun.

The following week I lost another big fish which threw me and the hook by popping up to the surface like a big paper bag before I even realised I was into a grayling. Worse I spotted the rest of a previously unobserved pod break for deeper water as my lost fish rejoined his chums. I was not too disturbed. To coin a phrase "I'll be back", because the season is just beginning!

Bill Drew can be contacted at bill.drew@lineone.net

Bill lives in Selkirk in the Scottish Borders and fishes for brown trout and grayling in the River Tweed and its tributaries. He works in project management and European funding in Higher and Further Education.

He states his interests as Family /Fishing/Football in that order.

His wife might question his statement that family comes first, or indeed second in his priorities.