Tuesday 6th October 2020

With the end of the season fast approaching I jumped at the chance to fish yet another new water for me. My good friend Stuart very kindly had invited me to join him on the famous Cardrona beat on The Tweed and I couldn’t wait to explore this great beat and to squeeze in yet another new water before the end of the Season.

Having done as much asking and reading as possible I arrived slightly later than agreed eager to see the water and get setup. Whilst online information available from SEPA gauges is a modern bonus and extremely helpful I have found that this online resource is only useful once you can relate the height information to ‘normal’ or to a particular area of the river. After the massive downpour and rise in height to 6’3″ on Sunday 3rd Oct. the river had settled to a height of 2’4″ when I arrived. This sounded ideal and added to our optimism about the day.

After setting up we set off to firstly explore the beat upstream of the MacDonald Hotel just to firstly see the conditions and to familiarise ourself with the various eight pools.

Exploring the right bank we were immediately aware of the height of the water and the challenge that we later faced in finding which pools we could actually safely wade. My casting is at best ‘intermittent’ and deteriorates markedly when forced to cast from the bank. Undeterred and eager to get a line out we fished from just below the road bridge downwards finding some good areas where we could get into. We fished hard working our way downstream accompanied by a chilly downstream wind seeing the odd fish turn or splash, usually behind us. A resident fish in a pool named “The Dirtpot” of all things which has a large outflow pipe of a burn from beneath the road above persistently reminded us it was there but seemed totally disinterested in any offering that we presented.

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By lunchtime we had explored most of the beat and retreated to a nearby cafe “Nashy’s” for coffee a roll and a strategy meeting. The cafe unfortunately was closed but offered a welcome seat were we could break into the packed lunch.

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Before starting off again Stuart had fetched his single hander in order to try to improve casting options to those areas proving tricky to get a line out. I had been musing during lunch that given the height of water then my favourite orange and gold 7cm rapala would have been a handy alternative but this was not an option given that spinning was not permitted after the 14th September.

The river slowly dropped during the afternoon to around 2′ making things slightly better. With the wind dropping and an increase in the temperature then this seem to point towards more favourable conditions with trout increasingly starting to rise below us. We fished the accessible pools and stretches all the way downstream once more.

Following yet another change of fly to a gold bodied Willie Gun 3/4″ copper tube I fished down a pool called “Lower Nutwood” trying to cast to the tree lined far bank. I had started to see increasing numbers of fish showing as I worked my way down and was admittedly distracted admiring the amazing Autumn colours when I had the first decent tug of the day just as the fly began to swing around. Buoyed of course by this first real sign of interest, aside from wee trout, I carefully and steadily turned my full attention to fishing the pool as well as possible. Alas no further pulls and starting to weary I decided to retire to the bank and the bench to await Stuart who was fishing below me and had since disappeared around the bend.

Admiring the spectacular scenery and the birds of prey soaring high above the hills opposite I decided to call it a day. Upon his return Stuart fished a few pools as we made our way back upstream and we both agreed that it had been a ‘challenging’ but very enjoyable day despite the lack of interest by our prey. It had indeed been a very good day I thought as I wearily struggled to remove waders and pack up the gear. According to the wonders of GPS my watch should that I had walked a distance of 14.4km which was a surprise but a good one.

As anglers we are a hard lot to please and never fail to find one thing or another that impacted my (our) ability to land fish. High water or not this is a beautiful beat and one definitely worth visiting again. Thank you Stuart for your company, experience and advice.