The Clyde By Carstairs, UCAPA Waters.

The meetings, Medwin water meets the clyde

Well, the Clyde never fails to impress. This was the first time I've had a chance to fish this part of the river and I will be back! For sure! Its a wide river at this point, very deep and slow moving with huge eddies and back waters, this made trying to cast a fly with no drag a challenge to say the least. We managed to get down relatively early, around 3.00 pm which was good because the first mission was to track down permits. You wouldn't think this would take about a 20 mile trip round Carnwath, no permits there, Bigger also, no permits and then to Lanark where we eventually tracked them down at the tourist information office.

You stay oot ma feild, right!

We defo picked the right day for it, at first, very bright with a slight breeze but, still, there was fish moving all over the place. By this time i was getting rather worked up imagining all the huge fish i was about to catch, i should have known then it would never be that easy, especially on the Clyde.


The Clyde

Starting with a couple nymphs this is when i first realised how much of a problem these eddies and crazy currents would be. In so many places, it was almost impossible to get a nice drag free cast, trying to predict where the fly was going to lie was defo the second wee mission of the evening. Also, these places were almost always where you would see most fish move, some big fish at that. A few hours past, couple of takes on the spider, no results though. Changed to the dry just before the sun went down. The river changed at this point, it started to almost boil over with fish. I casted and casted, changed my fly countless times and still no results. As the last of the sun went over the hill and i couldn't see my fly on the water, i was actually contemplating a blank!!!

The last ditch, changed to quite flashy couple of wets and the fun started there. Caught 2, largest about 1lb and lost another 3 or 4, all of this was in near total darkness.

A great evening had, never wanted to come home actually!

One last word though, darkness and electric fences don't mix!