June was, as usual, a very slow month for the River Creed with low water dominating and only one salmon recorded. The low water level allowed repair work to be carried out on the Sheriff Pool and the rebuilding of the lower river pools.

July has seen a change in the weather with a small rise in river levels on the 4^th of July allowing a reasonable number of salmon, grilse and sea trout to enter the Creed. The river benefitted from 2 further rises in level last week which allowed further fish to enter the system. Unfortunately, each rise in river level dislodged more silt, weed and algae from the river bed which made the river run very dirty at times. A few salmon and grilse were landed with several more lost. Some very good sea trout were seen running the river last week but, like the salmon, they were running quickly and were, for the most part, ignoring anglers lures. Loch Clachan was lightly fished due to high winds, but as a quieter week is forecast I expect Loch Clachan will be the place to be this week.

As I write this, there is heavy rain falling which, hopefully, will give the river the flood it needs to clean the river bed. The rivers on the West of the island, which get runs of fish earlier than the Creed,  have had a very good start so I am hopeful that when the main Creed runs arrive towards the end of July, we shall have another very good season.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Grimersta running at a very good level yesterday. Salmon will have no difficulty running right through the Grimersta system into Loch Langavat at the moment so the SAA boats on Loch Langavat should see some salmon action from now on.

The brown trout enthusiasts report that June was a very good month with lots of good quality free rising trout landed. For those not interested in salmon fishing, the SAA trout boats remain a good alternative right through until the end of the brown trout season on 6 October.

I intend to give short weekly updates from now on. As well as fishing reports I intend to report on other matters I feel might interest or amuse you.

I have noticed over the years that most of the salmon fishers I see on the Creed are using collapsing/ folding nets. Quite a few anglers also carry their nets and nearly all the nets are of a size more suited to trout fishing.

On the Creed there are very few pools that have places where salmon can be beached so landing nets are essential items, especially if you plan to release the fish when it becomes important to get the fish in and released as quickly as possible. There are sometimes high Banks where landing nets with short handles are useless and folding /collapsing nets have a habit of doing just that when an angler tries to fit in a large salmon. Why do anglers risk losing what may be their only fish of the day/week by using unsuitable landing nets?

I would suggest a good sized Gye net with a sling is a must when fishing the Creed.

Last Monday an angler lost a very good salmon at the net because he could not fit the salmon into the net.

Last weeks hard luck story was the angler who hooked a very large sea trout (large grilse size) on a size 12 Butcher in the Falls Pool. Unlike most fish which run of downstream, this fish decided to jump up the falls and run upriver leaving the angler helpless and unable to follow resulting in the inevitable loss of a very good fish!