Friday 29 June 2012

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.


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Sunday 24 June 2012

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.

Wednesday 20 June 2012

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

Sunday 17 June 2012

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

Wednesday 6 June 2012

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!!

Sunday 3 June 2012

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!

Friday 1 June 2012

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'07'08'09'10'11Average'12
Feb755524.814
Mar88134118.84
Apr7159222215.013
May6119252916.013
Jun351113128.80
Jul1571391612.00
Aug91914293521.20
Sep11189322218.40
Oct0212423514.60
Total66109107162154119.644

Carlogie Fish Catches
Salmon & Grilse
Year'07'08'09'10'11Average'12
Feb887667.07
Mar1712891512.214
Apr132520155525.622
May145633497044.470
Jun21642234525.60
Jul151134234024.60
Aug423936504843.00
Sep284031494939.40
Oct02349465835.20
Total139230260270386257.0113

Ballogie Fish Catches
Salmon & Grilse
Year'07'08'09'10'11Average'12
Feb151028132117.421
Mar202319132119.229
Apr243425336436.042
May133043425035.644
Jun112038204126.00
Jul131231304626.40
Aug241841454634.80
Sep403970656155.00
Oct03490447047.60
Total160220385305420298.0
136