Warmer evenings

                                  A nice Grisle goes back!

Today the air temperature pushed past 20c, it's been a long time since we had a warm evening for some Sea-trout fishing! Hopefully tonight we can get some good sport and get a few in the book, we are hugely down on numbers and need to catch up to our averages.

                George Kuczera with a sea-liced fish from Rossicks

There could be a fly in the ointment however, as with warm temperatures comes the chance of thunder storms!!! The river has just dropped to a good level for all the beats and the peat stain has all but gone, the last thing we need is a lot more rain and a rising river.

As far as this weeks catches are concerned, it's been a good start, Carlogie is leading the way again and is already into double figures and it has now overtaken Ballogie as the top beat on the river for catches, could this year be the year Carlogie beats Ballogie!!!

Double the 5 year average!!!

 Kevin Fraser with a good fish from the Bend pool at Commonty caught on one of my Cascade Snaelda doubles.

Carlogie has had another great week!! finishing with total of 17 salmon and Grilse for the week, this brings the total for June for Carlogie to 54, compared with an 5 year average catch for June of 25 which is more than double the average!!

   Rob Bull with a fish from Rossicks pool Carlogie, this was caught at 3ft 3" on the gauge!!

The Ballogie beats produced 24 salmon for the week with Richard Newtons party landing 19 for their week at Carlogie and Ballogie, had the river levels behaved we could of had a much better week. Sea-trout catches have been poor due to the conditions but I'm sure if it ever stops raining we could see a big catch of Sea-trout, as I'm writing this the rain is as hard as ever and we may yet again get a rising river for the start of the new week.

"Singing in the rain"

High Water!

 Nice Grilse covered in sea-lice, caught on a Willie Gunn Snaelda

The high water from last week has helped move new fish into the Ballogie beats, we're catching lots of fish with long tailed sea-lice including a good number of Grilse, this is a pleasent suprise as for the last few years they have been coming in August. A good mixture of summer salmon are being caught with the biggest so far weighing in at 16lbs, the water height is proving difficult to access the more traditional low water pools but the high water pools are producing fish with again Alans pool providing good sport.

Ready for landing at Alans pool

With rain appearing in the weather forcast most days this week, hopefully we can have a pretty level river height rather than a up and down river, this will settle the fish in the pools and make it easier for the anglers.

Please support the Deeside Beer Festival

More great catches

                                   15lber from the Top Gannets

Another great week for the Ballogie beats, 31 salmon and 10 Sea-trout were landed by the rods this week, the largest was an 18lb fish from the New pool at Ballogie. we should of had a lot more than this but we couldn't hold on to them, one rod reported 9 for his week with a further 9 lost and too many takes to count.

Robin Kemp with his largest fish to date.

Had the river not come up due to the storm we had on thursday them who nows how many fish we would of landed, as the river dropped we saw lots of new fish in the pools and landed Salmon with long tailed lice on Saturday. Hopefully the river will drop slowly this week and with the teams we have the scores should be high.

Superb catches

 A Good fish from the Flats pool at Ballogie caught today on a Franc N Snaelda in murky water

A good run of fresh fish has arrived at the Ballogie beats this week, in 2 days the beats have reported 15 Salmon and 5 sea-trout with lots of fish played and lost, Carlogie is leading the way with 10 Salmon so far!

A stunning Salmon caught at Commonty

These catches have now moved Carlogie into second place behind Ballogie for the most fish caught so far this year on the whole river. The fish are spead though the pools but as the water is now dropping they are moving into the more streamier runs, Carlogie has to be one of the most productive low water beats in Scotland

Grilse!!

                      Ivor Macdonald with his first fly caught salmon

A great week for the Ballogie beats again, a total of 34 salmon and 5 sea-trout reported by the rods!
We had settled conditions all week and a slowly falling river, this seemed to encourage fish to run the river in decent numbers and we saw good pods of fish running all week.

                       Another victim for the Franc N Snaelda!!

Also this week we saw the first Grilse being caught on the beats, this is early for them to be here as for the last few years they seemed to be coming in later and later, I'm not complaining as they are welcome anytime. The sea-trout run has started and so far the average fish size is good with the biggest this week weighing 4lbs, hopefully the nights will get warmer and we can fish through the night for them.

                A stunning night time Sea-trout caught at Carlogie

Cracking video!!!

  A get video from Andrew Williamson who had a great week at Carlogie

A big "Thank-you" to Andrew Williamson who has let me use the Pictures and video footage of his week at Carlogie, I also want to thank eveyone who has let me show all the great photos of the fish they have caught on the Ballogie beats, the Blog would be a bit boring without them.

                   Into a good fish at the Top Gannets pool, Ballogie

Much needed rain has appeared today, maybe the level will rise tomorrow and hopefully this will bring in some new fish up the river, Grilse have been reported on other Rivers since monday, so maybe they will enter the Dee soon and continue the decent catches we've had.

                                         Safely into the net!!

Summer time!

 Andrew Williamson with yet another cracker from the Mill Pool, Carlogie


With the spring run behind us we are now looking forward to the start of the Summer fishing, even today the river has dropped down to under 1ft on the gauge, so now it's full floating lines, long leaders and small doubles. But if you fish with me you'll need heavy sinkers as well!! Because I beleive if they wont come up for the fly, you have to go down to the fish, so what if you lose a few flies, it's worth it!!

           Franc N Snaeldas tied on doubles-can't tie enough of them!!

Last week saw the biggest run of fish so far this year, hopefully more will have moved in over the weekend and we can build on the good spring catches we've had so far, last week saw a mixture of fresh and old fish being caught but they were certainly in the mood for the fly!

Best Spring Beat!!!

Lars Terkildsen with a fish from Commonty

Well thats the spring season over and it's turned out quite good!! However, this has been the hardest spring I have ever had, the conditions have been difficult to say the least! We lost 9 days in February due to grue which was impossilble to fish in, March was the hottest on record with Aboyne breaking the highest temperature ever recorded in Scotland for  March, the river dropped to 7" on the gauge and we had a water temperature of 55F, April saw more settled conditions but fish were still hard to catch, lots of them had fungus on them due to the drop in water temperature.

                 Tony Wheeler playing a 19lber in the Village pool

May arrived and so did the snow!! The temperature dropped and it was like fishing in March! However, this gave the hills a much needed covering of snow which is still melting into the river. In all my years as a Ghillie I've never seen snow fall so late in May, this did the trick though as new fish entered the river and flew past the bottom beats and decided to stop at the Ballogie beats! Carlogie did very well and yesterday the rods fished as hard as they could to catch the 2 fish required to beat last years total. Unfortunatly they only managed to get 1 - well done to Neil McGown from East Haugh Hotel, Pitlochry for getting 1 from Alan's pool last night this fish brought the total catch for the month of may to 70 equaling last years total.

            Another nice fish caught by Andrew Williamson at Carlogie


After looking through the catch figures, Ballogie was the top beat on the river with a total catch of 136, Carlogie came 3rd with a total of 113, while Commonty almost managed to hit its 5 year average with a total of 44. While most beats struggled to catch fish, the Ballogie beats consistently caught fish all through the spring, I'm very proud of all my fishermen who battled some really atrocious weather and river conditions at times to achieve these numbers, It's also satisfiying to see fish being caught in some of the new pools we have made - Alan's pool and Fraser's pool have produced good numbers of fish but these pools are still to be further improved in the winter.

Commonty has had the largest fish at 25lbs
Below are the figures for all 3 beats, have a look at them it makes for some interesting reading!

Commonty Fish Catches

Salmon & Grilse

Year	'07	'08	'09	'10	'11	Average	'12
Feb	7	5	5	5	2	4.8	14
Mar	8	8	13	4	11	8.8	4
Apr	7	15	9	22	22	15.0	13
May	6	11	9	25	29	16.0	13
Jun	3	5	11	13	12	8.8	0
Jul	15	7	13	9	16	12.0	0
Aug	9	19	14	29	35	21.2	0
Sep	11	18	9	32	22	18.4	0
Oct	0	21	24	23	5	14.6	0
Total	66	109	107	162	154	119.6	44

Carlogie Fish Catches

Salmon & Grilse

Year	'07	'08	'09	'10	'11	Average	'12
Feb	8	8	7	6	6	7.0	7
Mar	17	12	8	9	15	12.2	14
Apr	13	25	20	15	55	25.6	22
May	14	56	33	49	70	44.4	70
Jun	2	16	42	23	45	25.6	0
Jul	15	11	34	23	40	24.6	0
Aug	42	39	36	50	48	43.0	0
Sep	28	40	31	49	49	39.4	0
Oct	0	23	49	46	58	35.2	0
Total	139	230	260	270	386	257.0	113

Ballogie Fish Catches

Salmon & Grilse

Year	'07	'08	'09	'10	'11	Average	'12
Feb	15	10	28	13	21	17.4	21
Mar	20	23	19	13	21	19.2	29
Apr	24	34	25	33	64	36.0	42
May	13	30	43	42	50	35.6	44
Jun	11	20	38	20	41	26.0	0
Jul	13	12	31	30	46	26.4	0
Aug	24	18	41	45	46	34.8	0
Sep	40	39	70	65	61	55.0	0
Oct	0	34	90	44	70	47.6	0
Total	160	220	385	305	420	298.0	136

Big run of fish!!

                                    Beauty from Ballogie

Well catches have improved this week with a good run of new fish which have stirred up some of the resident fish as well. Ballogie and Carlogie are doing well but Commonty doesn't seem to be holding fish, which is strange as they have resident fish in most of the pools.

     One of 4 fish caught by Andrew Williamson at Carlogie yesterday

With only 1 day remaining of the spring season I hope that we finish with a big day tomorrow, we are still chasing numbers and hope to beat last years total for May at Carlogie, conditions couldn't be more perfect with good river levels and cloudy skies and lots of fish!!!

I will do a complete round up of the Spring catches on Friday when I gather all the details of what has been caught and will post a review of the spring season.

100th fish from Carlogie

                              Back to carry on it's journey

Carlogie landed it's 100th fish of the season this week which also coincided with the first Sea trout being caught from the beat, Carlogie was top beat on the river again this week, which considering the conditions was a great achievement, well done to John Coutts and his party for getting up early and fishing very late but this was the only way to catch fish in the bright conditions.

           The 18lber caught by Chris Smith, helped by Grandson Will.

With only 4 days left of the spring we are still chasing numbers, Ballogie only need 2 to beat the 5 year average and Carlogie have already beaten the 5 year average but we still need 11 to beat last years superb total of 70 fish for May, conditions this week look a little better with colder daytime temperatures forecast, so we will hopefully have a great end to the spring run.

Costa Del Dee!!

                                 Superb fish from Ballogie.

It's proving difficult this week due to the huge change in temperature we've seen on Deeside, the water temperature was 49f on Monday but by tuesday evening it had risen to 61.5f which is the fastest rise i've ever seen! The daytime temperature also rocketed with a high yesterday of 24C which in turn melted the snow we had last week and the river has risen to over 2ft 4". The fish seem unable to cope with the changing conditions and have just switched off!! The only positive thing i've seen is a few Sea trout have entered the river and are showing in the pools, this evening should see some better conditions, as the sun sets and the air cools we may get some sport, Fingers crossed!

Ladies Day

                              A wee bar of Silver from Commonty

Chris Smith had a day to remember today, she hooked 3 large fish and landed 2 of them! She had 1 at 16lbs and 1 at 18lbs from the top Gannets pool before 10 O'clock this morning, then she hooked into something much larger, the fish took in the Top Gannets and after a great fight decided to leave the pool and head for the Middle Gannets, were again after fighting it again it then ran out down to the Lower Gannets, all this took place over a 20 minite period, the fish then decided it didn't like the Lower Gannet and ran back up the other side of the pool heading upstream, trying to get back to the Middle Gannet and the leader snapped!! Somebody will hopefully land a big fish this week, I hope it's us!!
I should get pictures of the fish when she gets back home.

                             And a thumper from Ballogie                      

250th fish

                          From the Lower Inchbare, Ballogie

We had the 250 Salmon of the season yesterday from the Ballogie Beats and it was caught by none other than the Laird! This is our first great milestone of this season and I hope we can go on building on this great accievement. The Lairds party finished with 14 for the week, with the total catch being 20 from the 3 beats, not too bad considering the weather conditions and the rising and falling river. As I write this we have had a daytime temperature of 14 degrees, so I can see the river rising overnight due to snow melt which will again unsettle the fish for tomorrow.

                                 Solid Silver in the net

A more positive note

                                Sealiced fish from Carlogie

I expected a few more fish this week but they are coming through in small pods and if you're in a pool where they stop you're in luck! We pick away at every pod catching 1 or 2 as they move through the beats, if we get a fish a Commonty we can expect some action an hour or so later at Ballogie and then later at Carlogie.

                       Nice fish from the Garden pool at Commonty

The evening fishing has been hard due to the cold conditions we have, this week last year the water temperature was 10 degrees warmer so the fish switch off as it get colder later in the evening, we have had snow down to lower levels on Thursday and a cold northeasterly wind since which isn't helping catches. In my career as a Ghillie, I've never seen snow as late as this but on a more positive note the hills have plenty of snow which could keep the river at a good height well into June

Lairds week

                                    Nice fish from Commonty

Well the Boss is fishing this week so the pressures on!! He has the rods at Carlogie and the 2 above the bridge at Ballogie, on monday we only landed 2 both from Ballogie but improved with 5 yesterday, 2 again from Ballogie but with 3 from Carlogie.

Commonty got our first Seatrout of the season with a fine fish of 4lbs, anyone who catches Seatrout on the Dee knows this is a cracker and hopefully this will mean some good sport in the evenings for them.

        Action from the Bullworks, the best high water pool on the river! 

Top beat again!!

                       A good fish from the Bullworks Ballogie

A disapointing end to the week after the river came up on Friday night and lots of peat entered the river and I knew we would struggle, however it was still a great week with Carlogie claiming top spot on the river with 21 salmon, Ballogie finished with 9 and Commonty 6 which compared to last season was half of the catch on the same week last year.

With the river dropping and the colour clearing I'm looking forward to seeing whats in the pools tomorrow, The weather forcast is for showers for the start of the week however at the moment we have gale force winds battering us, these are supposed to die down for tomorrow so casting should be easier for the guests.

Decent Catches

                                 A beauty from Ballogie

Catches continue to improve this week, with a total of 31 Salmon caught so far from the 3 beats, Carlogie is leading the way with 19 so far, biggest 19lb caught today by Tony Wheeler from the Village pool, this was his biggest ever on a fly! Ballogie have had 9 so far but yesterday the rods had lots of lost fish including 5 lost fish in a row (Rubber hooks again!) Commonty has had 6 so far, but worringly Ian reports not many resident fish in the pools, therefore the fish seem to be running straight through.

                                       Ready for action

A fantastic day

                     Sealicer going back at Frasers pool Carlogie

A fantastic day yesterday on the Ballogie beats, Carlogie had a great day landing 7, Ballogie only managed 1 but it was the biggest off the river and Commonty had 3. It's great to see these new sealiced fish coming into the middle river now but it's also a bit worring to see fungus even on the fresh fish.

                                 A bright fish from Carlogie

A small rise in the river seemed to put the fish off today but hopefully it will settle down by this evening and we should enjoy some good sport till we lose the light.

TOP BEAT!!!

                   Nice fish from the Garden pool at Commonty

As of last week Ballogie was the top beat on the whole river!! We broke the 100 salmon mark on Saturday and finished up with 104 by the end of the day. The fact that we have had one of the worst Springs for conditions I can remember makes this a special acheivement and I would like to thank all the Fishermen and Women who have made this possible.

                                          Back it goes!

It was good to see both Ballogie and Carlogie leading the way last week both being the top beats on the river and in total the Ballogie beats produced 31 fish for the week. It was good to hear that Henrik Larsens party had a good end to the week with 6 fish on Saturday evening, it shows that fishing into the late evening can be very productive.

                Another fish for Ola from the Garden pool at Commonty

"Monster"

                                       A face full of bubbles!

A quieter start to the week than I thought but the river rose almost a foot yesterday and went coloured! We mansaged 1 from Carlogie caught by Alan Lankshear from the village and 2 from Ballogie, biggest 15lbs.

                             Action at the Sands pool, Ballogie

Today saw more action at Ballogie, we lost a good fighting fish from the Sands then got a 10lb fish from the Bullworks and had a 10lber from the Lower Inchbare pool.

I got a call from a fisher at Carlogie who was into a "Monster" in the Long Haugh pool and couldn't move it. I was just in Alans pool above him and waded across to the island in my Tweeds and wellys, I was up to my Crown jewels as I crossed the stream and on reaching the fisher I said it had better be a big fish! A couple of minutes later we had the "Monster" landed but it turned out only to be a 13lb "Monster", luckily he had caught it on one of my flies so I forgave him for getting me soaked.

Prospects are good!

                                   One goes back at Ballogie

A pretty good result for last week given the conditions, we really lost one and a half days fishing to the flood, however it seems to have brought in a lot of new fish into the system, prospects are pretty good for next week as all the beats will fish very well at the height we have now.

             Jerk Sonnichsen with a fish from  the Slips pool, Ballogie

A total of 42 fish were landed from the Ballogie beats last week with Jerk Sonnichsen's team landing 28 from Ballogie, again this was a great score considering the conditions, however they managed 29 last year when the water was very low, who knows how many they will get when they get a good water level for their week!!

I've subscribed to Twitter, so I can instantly upload catches and photos both to the Blog and also to Facebook, I'll see how it goes and no doubt there will be A few hiccups getting things right. To follow me on Twitter simlpy click on the link at the top of the blog and follow the instructions, If I can do then so can you.

Good day at the office!

                                            Quick release

A rather good day for the Ballogie beats today with a total of 13 salmon so far, I will hopefully get a message tonight with more fish to add. Peter Terndrup was top rod at Ballogie with 5 fish this morning from below the bridge, 2 for River Dee chairman Ian Scott from Carlogie and 1 for Alan Lankshear which was covered in long tailed sealice.

                   Peter Terndrup with salmon no4 from Ballogie

It's great to see so many fish in the pools, after 2 lost days due to high water I hope that we can have a great end to the week. The water height could be perfect for all 3 beats tomorrow so we will see what we can do to get the average up after such a bad start to the season.

           Alan Lankshear playing his fish In the Villadge pool, Carlogie

No more rain dancing!!

This a video of the Cattie Burn which runs through my garden and comes out into the river between The Bullworks and Burnmouth pools

                               Upstream veiw of Potarch Bridge

After a great start to the week the water has gone mad!! Everyday we've had a rise but to day after heavy rain all night the river rose fast just at lunchtime. I was doing a talk to a group of Norwegian beat owners and river managers at Potarch hotel today about what we do at Ballogie to improve the fishing and all about how we market the beats including this blog, this lasted about an hour and during that time the river rose 1ft!!

                          Downstream veiw from Potarch bridge

With Ballogie producing 8 fish on Monday then 3 yesterday and another today we should of had a great score this week but if the river drops, I'm sure the fish will of run hard and and fast up to us and stop for a rest. Commonty had a good day yesterday with 3 for the day and Carlogie have had 1 a day so far this week and it was good to net a fish for Alan Lankshear who at 89 years old and in his 50th year at Ballogie is still pulling them out, he said it was his wish to catch a fish on the Ballogie beats when he is 90!

Potarch Hosts New Fishing Season

A great video for anyone who hasn't seen it on the fishdee website, Ballogie estate will be hosting the opening ceremony at the  Ballogie beat for at least the next 4 years.

    A fish caught last week at Carlogie from the Village pool at 4ft 6 ",     Will managed to hang on to this one after losing 5 in row!!