Family Fishing Day on the Nith

Family Fishing Day on the Nith

22^nd November 2014

A fishing day on the River Nith near Nunholm was recently held to provide young people with the opportunity to learn how to fish, improve their casting and try their luck at catching a fish.  Borderlines staff; Chris Bowman, Glyn Freeman and Clive Mitchelhill gave expert tuition to participants wanting to try their hand at different types of fishing and were assisted by Roger Smith, a local angler from Dalbeattie.

The day started with a talk about safety when out fishing, including remembering to put a stick in the ground so that you can tell if the river starts to rise.  Due to a heavy spell of rain the night before the river was still rising and it was interesting to see that by the end of the day our stick had disappeared from view.  Chris, Clive and Glyn then spoke about the fish species that would be targeted that day (grayling and salmon) and about the different flies and baits that would be used.   Debbie from the Nith Catchment Fishery Trust then carried out a kick sampling demonstration to find some of the bugs and beasties that are imitated when fly fishing.

Everyone then got to try their hand at fishing using fly and bait rods and a good number of fish were landed.  No monsters were caught but we had a couple of brown trout and a nice sea trout, lots of salmon parr and a couple of juvenile grayling.  This provided great opportunities to practice landing and unhooking fish, all of which were returned to swim another day. By the end of the day everyone’s casting had improved and hopefully there will be a few more young anglers fishing the Nith next year.

A big thank you to everyone that made the day a success, including Andy Brown from D&G Council for helping to organise the day and for permission to fish, the guys from Borderlines and Roger Smith for the tuition and the local anglers who kindly allowed us to take over a stretch of the river on the second last Saturday of the fishing season.

The Nith Catchment Fishery Trust will be running more fishing days next year as part of the Fishing for the Future Project.  If you are interested in taking part in these free events, join our mailing list by emailing trust@river-nith.com.  All of our events are also publicised on our Facebook page and at www.river-nith.com.

This project is being part financed by Axis 4 of the European Fisheries Fund 2012-13 programme and the Holywood Trust.