The Esk system continued to suffer from drought conditions with night fly fishing being the only way to land a sea trout. For much of the month this was fine and reasonably good numbers of fish wriggled in off the tide as far up as Langholm on the Esk and Penton Linns on the Liddle.
Toward the latter ten days or so of the month, with increasingly hot and dry weather, fish became loath to take anything, merely laying tight in rock gullets and under boulder edges. Rods would make a day time recce' of the pools with the Polaroid's on, see fish, with quite a few large specimens among them, only do blank at night, or land one if in luck. The river became difficult to fly fish as June ended due to rocks sticking up through the surface in the tail of pools, which snagged the line on its draw through the tail of the pools.
Remarkably fresh sea trout were still seen coming into the pools . Fishery manager Iain Bell, witnessed a run of fish entering Hollows beat and two of them viciously pursuing a smolt round and round the pool at speed before settling into lie. Next day they had just moved on to be replaced with another contingent. Never huge shoals, but usually up to a dozen or so at a time, with the odd larger group of 40 or so seen around Canonbie.
Fishing for ten days holiday at Gilnockie Cottage, Nick Wilcox landed 5 sea trout to 3lbs from Hollows Beat and 7 sea trout to 2 1/2 lbs from Tower Beat , mainly on Silver Stoat. Richard Oliver landed sea trout from each , Tower & hollows to 2 lbs. Phil Pearce tempted a good 3 pounder from Crooked Pool on silver stoat., where Brian Cooper also landed one of 2 lbs 8 oz. Colm Fenton caught a sea trout on black pennel.
Joe Haseldon landed one just under 2lbs from Boat wire at Irvine house. Ross Currie was patient until 02.45 in the morning to land a 2 3/4 lb beauty on Medicine fly from the Moat on Canonbie Beat.
Remarkably, Geoff Harvey of Wigton encountered a fresh run 10lb salmon in Willow Pool which must have crawled in on its belly off the tide. It fell to a single Invicta trout fly on the single handed rod !
Jim Feehan had a brace to 2 3/4 lbs one off Boat Pool on the Liddle and another from Dead Neuk. Jackie Allan also landed on just over 2 1/2 lbs from Dead Neuk.
As June turned to July, good steady rain finally came and if it continues , hopefully Esk & Liddle will soon be restored to a more normal height, bring the rest of the sea trout in and some grilse also.
