11th May 2022

A great day on the River Earn at ‘Drummond Castle’ beat. A first for me on this part of the river but I was in safe hands with my good friend Kevin who has many years experience of fishing this beat, including the halcyon days when Salmon and Sea Trout catches were beyond prolific.

This is truly a lovely beat with some really interesting deep pools and some great looking runs Whilst many pools were fishable many were sadly overgrown with trees and bushes. Alas the water was just too high for the fly so the ‘cheating stick’ was the order of the day.

Albeit high the water was a lovely ‘tea’ colour and pretty clear as we worked our way upstream. Kevin managed to hook several nice wee brown trout and I could hear cries of frustration above me as Kevin had several takes or follows from some sizable fish! This pattern continued for most of the day with some lovely small finnock and brown trout accounting for most of the catches. Between the squalls of rain sand martins appeared and provided a stunning display of aerial acrobatics as they fed on the wing amidst the backdrop of Spring colours and new greenery bursting into life. Video below is a snapshot of a very enjoyable day on this lovely part of The Earn

For myself I was delighted to hook and land a beautiful Sea Trout of around 4lb! Towards the end of the day as we worked our way back downstream Kevin turned a large fish in one of the deeper pools on a Vision 110 which unfortunately failed to connect! I opted to have a smoke and wait before I followed him down the same pool ten minutes later covering the high banked pool.

Half way down I got a real shock on looking below me as a very large salmon appeared from at my feet following the vision lure right to the bank!! It came alongside the lure at the very end of the retrieve and turned below my feet before disappearing back into the depths of the pool! Being only feet above I was close enough to see the eyes of what was a lovely fish of at least 15lb – on my scale at least 🙃🙃😂

A great end to a good day out and a beat well worth a return to and hopefully cast a fly.