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Club Champion sets milestone in ADAA history

 

Sunday the 3RD May 2009 two weeks prior to my qualifying heat for the SANA Scottish rivers qualifying heat, Richard McHattie and I travelled down to Pitlochry from Aberdeen to fish a practice session on the beat where all six of the qualifying heats were to be fished; only the final would be held on the Tweed.
On the practice day the water was a bit on the low side and gin clear, the sun was out with little cloud cover. Richard and I discussed how we were going to tackle the days fishing and the tactic’s we were going to use.
The qualifying heats and the final are all fished to the same format, 08.30 SANA official briefing at meeting point, 08.45 contestants draw morning and afternoon pegs and draw a controller for the day. A controller is a responsible person usually an angler brought along by each of the twenty contestants, when you draw your pegs you also draw a competitors name which would mean that his controller is yours for the day. The controller is just like a judge, he is responsible for measuring and recording your catch, and the controller is also responsible for measuring your flies to make sure they adhere to the fly size permitted for these SANA competitions. Once you’ve drawn your pegs it’s time to get into your car and make your way to the your morning peg start point prior to the 10am start.
The heat is broken into four 90 minute sessions, two in the morning and two in the afternoon, so Richard and I decided to fish the practice day to the same format. We started on the lowest beat a mile or so below pitlochry which would be beat 20 at the heat. Both Richard and I had two rods set up. I had one rod set up with a team of spiders and one or set up with the dry fly, Richard had one rod set up with the dry fly and one set up with weighted nymphs. The spiders claimed the first fish of the day just fishing down and across as you would in most rivers and as the day progressed my team of spiders accounted for 11 brown trout, all returned to the river safely. Richard had as good a day with weighted nymphs accounting for some nice grayling as well as brown trout. I said to Richard at the end of the day, I just hope the fish are as keen at my heat as they have been today.
Sunday the 17th of April the day of my heat, I was up out of bed really early, loaded up the car and collected Richard at 6am and we discussed tactics all the way down to Pitlochry. Richard had already qualified for the Scottish river final the week before in what were very difficult conditions
We arrived at the venue car park just after 07.30 that’s when I started to get a bit nervous, well you would when you see you’ll be competing against some of the top rods in Scotland,the likes of Jake Harvey, Dick Logan and Davie Chalmers, anyway the draw went ahead and it was my turn, I picked peg 10 for my morning session and peg 11 for my afternoon session. I started dead on 10am as the controller called the time. I started off with my team of spiders on a Greys 10’ No 5 med to tip action rod, a No 5 double tapered floating line with 5Ib fluorocarbon, the flies were a hare’s ear & partridge on the dropper and a black spider on the point. I was off to a flying start with four nice brownies in the first session, one on the second session, one on the third session and 4 on the final forth session 4-1-1-4, this was enough to secure me 2nd place in the heat, the final result was in first place Jake Harvey, second place myself, third place was Dick Logan, in fourth place was Davie Chalmers, fifth place was Charlie Young and the six place was taken by Jason Hendry, these were the six anglers that would go forward to the SANA final on the Tweed on the 2nd August 2009 along with 14 other anglers from the remaining heats on the Tummel.

The Final
Doug Mathers and I arrived at the Tweed at St Boswells mid afternoon on Saturday 1st August which was the day prior to the final, I had asked Doug to come along as my controller for the final. When we arrived the water looked high and had a bit of colour about it, but still looked great. We walked a couple of the beats looking for area’s that looked fishy and we weren’t disappointed, there were lots of nice runs and glides that we thought would be perfect places for trout and grayling.
Later that evening we met-up with Richard McHattie and Dave Downie for a beer and a friendly chat, Richard and I were winding each other up about the final, but all in good taste.
The day of the final was here, the wind was strong and the sun was bright, not much cloud cover, just like the day I fished my qualifying heat on the Tummel. We all drove to the meeting point where the draw was to be made in the car park of local hotel, all the big names were there, David Dean, Chris Langton, Donald Forbes, Robert Irvine, Tom Calderwood, Keith Renton, Mick Tait, Calum Crossbie, Richard McHattie, Jake Harvey, Dick Logan, Davie Chalmers, Charlie Young, Jason Henry, John McCallum, John MacLennan, Grant Gibson, Mike Dunn, Billy Dewar. I drew peg 7 for my morning session and peg 19 for my afternoon session, both good pegs. My controller for the day was Simon Cocker, Simon was unfortunate not to qualify for the final, but I was glad to have him as a controller. We travelled by car to the start point on beat 7 which is a private beat where they allow SANA to fish in the final so I was looking forward to some good trout fishing.
10 am and I was off starting at the head of a small run leading into a great salmon pool, the spiders were fishing just the way I like them too, within 5 minutes I was into my first brownie, it had taken the hare’s ear and partridge size 14, Simon measured the trout and it was returned to the water. I fished through the pool until the end of the session but no more luck.
On the second session we went up-stream to another streamy part of the water, I fished through the streams into a long glide before hooking into a nice 43cm brownie, it was very welcome indeed.
That was 1-1 for the first two sessions which were good for that type of water in that condition. It was lunch time so we moved down stream to beat 19 which were right down at the bottom of the fishing’s. There is a great salmon pool right at the start of beat 19 with some great runs in between. I fished through the first pool for the whole of the 3rd session with no result, well a blank session in the final is a bad result, never mind there is still one session left.
Downstream there were 2 great runs so Simon and I walked down and I started fishing just above the first run and just as I got into the run a brownie took my fly, great it measured 29cm and returned, within five minutes I had another offer from a nice brownie bit it snapped my line, I quickly set-up another team and was fishing again, a couple of casts later, bang, into another nice brownie measuring 27cm and returned. This gave me a score of 1-1-0-2 which gave me 4th place overall.
The final result and the six anglers going forward to fish for the Scottish National river team for 2010 are
1st place Jake Harvey (St Boswell & Newton District Angling Association)
2nd place Robert Irvine (Crown Fly Fishers)
3rd place Grant Gibson (St Boswell & Newton District Angling Association)
4th Place Kenny Riddell (Aberdeen & District Angling Association)
5th place John MacLennan (Earlston Angling Association)
6th place reserve place Charlie Young (Jedforest Angling Association

I will be the first member in the history of the Aberdeen & District Angling Association to fish for his country in the river section of the Scottish Anglers National Association.

I look forward to reporting to the membership on a regular basis as I progress in 2010. I’m sure I will learn lots of new techniques and tactics during the time I spend with my Scottish team colleges.