On Saturday, I met up with Mick Bell from Bloke Fly Rods for a days fishing on the Little Blackhall and Inchmarlo beats of the River Dee.  This was my first time Salmon fishing in Europe so I was a little nervous to say the least as I'd never used a double handed rod.

I arrived on the Inchmarlo beat around 9am and was greeted by full time ghillie Terry Paton.  After setting up a Bloke 13"6 XL50 we set off down to the river in search of a fish.  The conditions seemed to be great and the previous five days had resulted in over one hundred salmon for the river but due to the recent heavy rain the water was peat coloured and the ever increasing sun was out with his hat on!

Mick arrived at the river and spent a fair time guiding and helping me with my double Spey cast and Snake roll and as the wind picked up right at the start of a lovely cast, my fly caught Mick in the middle of the forehead!.. Sorry Mick!

We decided to "rest the pool" at around 1pm and drove round to the opposite bank (Little Blackhall) for a spot of lunch, prepared by Mick's wife Anna.  A bowl of soup, sandwiches and some great fishing stories later we found ourselves back down at the river, this time fishing from the Little Blackhall side. 

As the evening progressed trout began feeding on surface insects and the odd salmon and sea trout made the odd appearance, surely laughing at us!

At around 10:30pm we decided to call it a day and head home with out a fish to the net but fishing in such a glorious area of Scotland, on such a prolific river and with great company the lack of fish was irrelevant.

Many thanks to Mick Bell from Bloke Fly Rods, his wife Anna and Ghillies' Martin Hayward and Terry Paton for such a lovely day.

I've uploaded a few photographs of the day in the Gallery here.

I met up with Karen Dockstader from New Mexico at the weekend for a spot of fishing. Read out report here.

On Sunday, I went down to Coyle Water Fishery, near Ayr.  The bright Sunshine and everlasting east wind meant fishing was going to be hard.  I was accompanied by a small dog who came up and lay beside me watching my every move!  Some fellow anglers were rewarded with the usual hard fighting, fin perfect rainbows and the odd brown but I concluded by observing others in hope I'd find out their secret!  I hear Colin is bringing on some goldies for the future too.. can't wait for them..

Our friends Colin & Lucy and Neil & myself booked our annual trip to Slovenia the other day from the 10th to the 17th September and it can't come soon enough!

This time we are flying from Birmingham to Trieste, Italy.  Like last year, we'll meet Simon, our crazy Slovenian Taxi driver who will drive us to Novo Gorica on the Italian / Slovenian border and on to our hotel, the Zlata Ribica in Idrija Pri Baci.  All in all, just 75km.

The River Idrijca runs only 30 metres in front of the hotel and other local rivers include the Tolminka, Baca, Trebusica, and famous Soca.

Obviously, I'll have a fishing report to post here on our return.. so look out for it before the end of September..

Tight lines for now...

Debs.....

Neil & I arrived at the Vet School stretch of the Kelvin this morning at 5am.

After a quick wash with May dew (for good luck) we tackled up and set off for the river.  There was a small hatch on but the trout seemed content as they were, or still sleeping at that time of the morning!  Matching the hatch, I put a small grey dry on and managed to rise a few fish within fifteen minutes.  Neil stayed further upstream pursuing fish on nymphs.

After a sandwich and coffee we walked downstream casting every other step eventually bringing a couple of wee brownies to the net.

By this time, the sun was up and very bright and temperature increasing so we decided to call it a day and head home..

Hopefully back out during the week or the coming weekend..

Debs... 

Hi,

I picked up my season ticket for the River Kelvin yesterday and plan to have a trek up there on Monday afternoon. 

Tight lines for just now..

Debs

Hi and welcome to Reel Backing.

As you can see the website is still in it's early stages but in the meantime please feel free to look around and if you want to get in touch, just complete the contact form..

Will be updating my blog very soon... Thanks for visiting..

Tight Lines... Debbie x