Stuart Fraser: Rods bending at Markle

AT last, I found an ice free water for a change, possibly due to its location close to the sea, writes STUART FRASER.

Markle was relatively busy and not surprising as the fish were very active.

It took a while before I could get something to take but after that it was fast and furious for at least half an hour. Fishing a floating line and single Sunburst Blob static proved irresistible to the fish. The fish were hitting the fly about 2-3 foot below the surface. The thing about Markle fish is that you never know quite what you are going to hit into. I managed to land and return two good fish of over 3lb but was smashed out with what I thought was a double figure brown trout. It was fairly obvious that the fish were shoaling up as rods were bending right up the far bank before moving out into deeper water.

Moving onto the smaller pond I went on to the black and white dancers.

I managed to coax one off the point of the island and another in the furthest corner of the fishery but neither were the quality of the main pond.

With the colder weather still dominating many anglers are making the same mistake of not slowing down the retrieve. Yes, there are times when the fish do chase but more often than not it is slow and deep.