Avon Sea Trout The
Linlithgow Angling Club manages the trout and sea trout
fishing on an extensive stretch of the little River Avon in
West Lothian.
Club members have done a great deal of work
since the nineteen eighties to help the river recover from
the heavy industrial pollution of earlier years. This lovely
little river now boasts a healthy population of brown trout
and is seeing
increasing runs of migratory fish,
particularly sea trout. The club, which has exclusive access
to ten miles of fishing on the lower middle river, welcomes
applications for membership, which is very reasonably priced
at only £30 per year (includes a River Avon £1 levy), plus a
£15 joining fee (2022 figure). Having joined the club
in 2007, I soon made use of the excellent map provided by
the club, in conjunction with the local ordnance survey map,
to explore the fishing throughout the length of the beat.
There is great variety in the fishing, some pools being
easily accessed from riverside paths, while others present
more of a challenge but offer truly wild fishing on pools
where the equally wild trout rarely see an angler's fly.
After some
heavy rain during the first week in August, I thought I'd
spend an afternoon on the club water, the afternoon of the
eighth day of the eighth
month of 2008. The Chinese people
thought it was a propitious day for the opening of the
Olympic Games. Perhaps it would prove fortuitous for me,
too. On arrival, I found the river running off after a
very
big flood, but still very dirty. It was a fine day and, by
the look of it, the river was likely to continue falling
throughout the afternoon. Judging that the river was still a
bit high and dirty for the usual small trout flies, I
decided to try a more substantial offering, in the form of a
simple one inch
needle tube fly with a black squirrel hair wing, in the
hope of attracting a sea trout. Such a fly had proved most
effective earlier in the year on the Spey, so I thought it
might be just the job for
the Avon sea trout. It proved a
good choice, as I finished the afternoon with a lovely sea
trout, a fish of nearly two pounds in weight, my first from
the river, and, as a bonus, half a dozen lovely wild
brownies, all of which were returned to fight another day.
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River
Avon at Linlithgow Bridge |
My first
Avon sea trout |
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