28/09/2012 - Straiton Pond

Hillend and The Pentlands and the weather

Time - 1600-1900
Weather - Westerly, threat of showers
Water - 4 or 5 inches up
Method - Float/Maggots
Total - 4
Species - 2 Roach to 6 inch/2 comedy Perch

Part 2 of my plan for today took me back to Straiton Pond which I've caught a bit of a bug for lately. Despite the different parameters of this session to the one on the Esk earlier, it proved remarkably similar in many ways.

I headed for the landslip mark expecting it to be sheltered to an extent from the wind. Chucked out my maggots and hooked a lovely wee Roach first cast. Delighted that I've now sussed the Perch and Roach in here I thought to myself 'brilliant, see how long I can keep up with a fish a cast'. I didn't catch another fish for 2 1/2 hours. An incredible pastime at time, sometimes so easy, sometimes bewilderingly uncooperative.

A new Personal Worst?

I did get some taps, but these were increasingly infrequent. I moved to the west corner mark - nothing. Tried a few new spots here and there - also nothing. With darkness and the weather closing in and a poker game to get to, I was tempted to chuck it fo rthe day, but resolved to have one last effort in the top right corner. Immediately I began to get interest. Once the maggots had dropped, the float would disappear, reappear and be constantly bothered.

Last Roach

No matter how hard I tried I couldn't connect. I wasn't even feeling the fish as you often do with a missed strike. I suspected Perch were the culprit and was close to filming some of the float madness and my missed strikes. I varied the amount of maggots from 1-3 and tried different colours when I eventually managed to hook probably my smallest ever rod caught fish. Obviously I was into a shoal of baby Perch who could hardly even get a maggot in their gob. As so often happens, you wait ages for a fish and another comes along straight away as I 'landed' another one the very next cast.

Not too keen to lay into this little lot now I'd discovered what they were, I explored around a bit more and soon lost, then landed another typical Roach of about 6 inches.

The first photo I've included shows the Pentland Hills from the banking on the north side of the pond. Anyone familiar with the Penicuik-Straiton part of Midlothian will know that Penicuik takes a disproportiantely higher amount of rain than Straiton and northwards into Edinburgh. Despite the short distances involved, 4-9 miles or so, the difference is maybe most apparent in winter when you leave snowbound Penicuik in polar gear to get the bus into Edinburgh and when you get there folk just stare as it's bone dry and relatively mild. This discrepancy is caused by the weather rolling in from the north-west and as it hits the Pentlands, turning into clouds that once up and over, often dump their contents on the other side. While it might not win any awards, I think this photo is an excellent example of how the weather frequently works in this area. The hill in the middle is Hillend, funnily enough the end of the Pentlands facing the south of the city. Here you can see above and to the right, lovely clear skies. Looking left it gets increasingly dark showing a serious rain dump over the area towards Penicuik.