Sorry about the complete lack of updates for this season. Entirely my fault as I left my camera on the Deveron back end of last season, actually its still their!!

Well so far its not been a record breaker to say the least. There are however some positives, the main one being the average size of the Salmon this year.
Here's one I took of the Dee on Thursday night [18th April] whilst fishing with my good friends Alan Olivier and Ian Neal. It was a terrible day for fishing with bright sunshine and summer levels. The fish took a size 10 ThunderFlash on 13.6 Seaguar Fluorocarbon, more like mid summer fishing than April. After a fair tussle the fish was beached, admired and returned. Ian and I estimated the fish between 18 and 20lb.

An even better fish was landed in early March by visiting angler Robert Gillespie from the Cellar pool. Netted by new boy Ghillie Kenny-Southbank-Reid.
The fish was estimated at 25lb and was covered in sea lice.

Otherwise Ive been flying around a bit, as well as the Dee Ive had a lot of fun on the Spey [but nae fish], fishing Tulchan D beat on the opening day. Tony Black had a lovely fish of 12lb on a Templedog tube fly, then it was on to Easter Elchies, Wester Elchies and with Bill Drury at Lower Pitchroy. All of them superb beats offering awesome fly fishing but there appear to be few fish around to date. I did hear today that a rod at Delfur grassed a 27lb fish which would not recover, he had 2 hours earlier landed a fish estimated at over 30lb which was returned, now that is some days fishing.

I had a very pleasant day at Upper Hendersyde on Tweed as a guest of David Pigott a couple of weeks ago and although we didn't land a fish the day I was their, they did have 5 for the week. There were plenty of fish in the beat but due to the weather most of the fishing was done first thing in the morning and late into the evening.

I also had a couple of days on the Findhorn at Altyre but only managed to loose one but it did go ballistic spending most of the fight dancing up and down the Rowan pool.
Ian Neale has had a bit more success with his clients. Here is Andrew Shaw with a cracking 12lb from the Rowan Pool. Don seems to love this river as this is his 3rd fish in his 2 visits.

Ian and I had a great day at Park in late February when we both managed to land our first fish of the season.

Mine came from Castleton which is a great pool in high water.It took one of our new Cascade Templedog Tubes fished on a wet cel 2.

What a great feeling landing your first fish of the season.

Ian's was also a superb fish with long tail sea lice covering its back, they don't get much fresher than that!

Just to bring us back down to earth, the next day every other angler seemed to be catching fish and we didn't touch a fish all day. Its a great leveler is Salmon fishing!

Earlier in the season we had are regular boys trip to Park on the Dee. This year the weather was terrible with strong winds mixed with blizzards. Plenty of Kelts to help keep us warm but no fresh fish for our two days.

We also should thank the new owners of the Potarch Hotel for the quality of there refit, warm welcome and excellent food.

Ok that's the wee bit of news to date more again soon especially if I can get my camera back!