Fish at last!!

At last the fish have arrived!! We managed to get some sealiced salmon this week, after the big flood last week I was pretty sure they would run up the river after it had cleared. I did expect to see more fish in the pools but due to the water temperature falling the fish seemed reluctant to move fast through the pools, the water temperature dropped from 48f to 42f due to the snow and frost we had towards the end of the week. With the weather forcast indicating no cold nights we may see some increase in the water temperature and some snow melt into the river.

                     Kevin Fraser with a fish from Fraser's pool at Carlogie, nice to get a fish in a pool named after you!!

Jerk Sonnichsen and his team from Denmark were at Ballogie this week, they had a total of 17 salmon and 2 seatrout. Jerk celebrated some firsts this week which included his capture of his 100th Dee springer!! He also caught his biggest Dee fish at 22lb and caught fish in 2 pools he had never had fish from before.

           Alan Lankshear playing a fish in the Boat pool at Carlogie, Alan will celebrate his 90th Birthday at the end of May!

Mike Wrightson and his team of rods were at Carlogie this week and with a little help from the Ghillies manages to land 11 Salmon for their week, It's great to see them fishing hard because the average age of the team this year is 84 years old!! I hope to still be able to fish like this when i'm 84!!

The Aftermath!

                                                       Some images of the flood from last week, the river hit 10ft twice!!

               Below are some images of the damage to the banks, when the river drops back we will see more damage!

                                                        The path to Alans pool completely washed away!!

                                    Looking down to the island at Long Haugh, 10ft of the bank has gone here!!

On a more positive note, all this high water has brought up new fish to the Ballogie beats!! So far today we have had 5 fish! And we're seeing lots of running fish moving through the pools, the river temp was 44f this morning and it  has dropped 5 inches today back to 3ft and is really clear at last so hopefully this will be the start of the spring run finally getting going.

Flood!!!

This was the scene today at Ballogie just below my garden, the river had risen over 7ft since this morning!! As you can imagine the river is like liquid chocolate mixed with lots of rubbish and trees!
Hopefully this will clear by tomorrow and we will be able to fish, the height wont be a problem if we can drop back to around 6ft on the gauge, all 3 beats will fish at this height and Ballogie has caught fish from the Bullworks pool at 7ft on the gauge in recent floods.

   Peter lonsdale launching a Franc N Snaelda across Frasers pool at Carlogie, he managed to get 4 of the 5 springer caught at Carlogie this week.

Catches were poor again this week but after this flood we should see fish moving through the lower beats and coming upto the Middle Dee and upper river this week so we should have an action packed week as long as the river behaves itself, we have rain and temperatures into double figures for the first half of the week, so it will be back to proper spring tactics with fast sinking lines and big tube flies fishing close to the bank.

 

No Change!!

                  Not a fish from the Ballogie beats but a supberb fish caught by Roald Meyer at Lower Crathes on a Franc N Snaelda tube tied by me!

After another week of lean pickings on the  Ballogie beats there seems no sign of the weather changing for the coming week, in fact we had snow this morning and a bitterly cold easterly wind all day, the weather forcasters predict more heavy snow for Wednesday and Thursday this week so we will continue with the same conditions till next week.

                                        Bjorn Sahlqvist with another fish from the Bridge pool at Ballogie

Seven fish were landed on the beats last week 4 from Ballogie, 2 from Carlogie and 1 from Commonty, the Franc N Snaelda accounted for most of the fish again but due to the low water we could only fish light lines with the float/Imtermediate being the best set up for the conditions.

                                   Bjorn with another fish from Ballogie again caught on a Franc N Snaelda

                                                                     A good Springer from Commonty 

Siberian Spring!

                                                                      A fine springer from Ballogie

That's another month gone by and still not much has changed in the conditions on the Ballogie beats, low water cold river temperatures have made sport difficult to say the least!! We did manage a few fish last week with Commonty producing 4 for the week which was really good, we have a great team of Scandinavian anglers fishing there for nearly 3 weeks who really put in the hours fishing and were duly rewarded with fish. Ballogie had 2 in the first part of the week and Carlogie only managed 1 for the week.

                                                                              Ready to be released!

With the weather seemingly stuck in the East there looks to be no change in the conditions for this week apart from maybe slightly warmer air temperatures which if we're lucky could melt some of the snow and bring the river up, this could provide us with some much needed fish to move from the lower river into the middle and upper river.

                                                             Mattias with a Rawner caught from Carlogie

Altough the catches for February and March look bad, they are still better than the catches of 2010, we have a short memory and only look at the present season to judge how the fishing has been.
 

Bloody Weather!

                                        A fish caught today at the Mill pool Carlogie in a rising and dirty river

 

Mawill Ludenbach from Fly-only Project with a springer from the Boat pool at Carlogie.

Catches haven't improved since my last entry! The river has been very cold with 2 days of Grue last week and some pretty horrible fishing conditions, we only managed 5 fish for all 3 beats last week and with the conditions we've had today I can't see us getting lots more this week, as i'm writing this we are having a blizzard outside with forcasters predicting upto 20" of snow for the mountains overnight and into tomorrow the river will still be cold and the fish slow to move through the river.

                                                       A nice one from the Top Gannets at Ballogie

 

Picking away - Again!!!

The River Dee opening ceremony, celebrating 150 years of the River Dee board. This was painted by local artist Howard Butterworth and it's limited to 100 signed copies. To own a piece of river Dee history go to www.thebutterworthgallery.com - I've ordered mine!!

 

                            
                                                         Mattias with a nice springer from the Top Gannets

Another hard week with only 9 fish from the Ballogie beats, which when you see what was caught on the river wasn't too bad!! Peter londsdales team at Ballogie had 7 for the week but with only 1 rod fishing on Monday, 2 on Tuesday and Wednesday and then 3 rods fishing Thursday, Friday and Saturday the beat could of produced more!!

                                                        Ernie Hemmings into a fish at upper Inchbare.

This morning we have snow again! And from what the weather forcasters say we could be in for a tough week! I had hoped that the rain that fell on Friday would of put the river level up significantly but nothing changed! It had fallen as snow on the hills and will now take a long time to get into the river, I hope that over the weekend some new fish will find their way up into the middle Dee so we can get some good sport next week, the team I have will fish hard and I'm sure of some good catches, it wont be for the lack of effort I can assure you!!

                                                                               Safely into the net!