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Day 4 - Fish Beware, and is that Ren's Luggage I see?

After a successful day traveling the Scottish countryside, and a relaxing evening in the Taynuilt Hotel Pub on Day 3, we were ready to slay the fish on Day 4.

We headed to the River Orchy bright and early to ensure we got our full day of fishing in. As you can see, the river ain't a bad place to be. As you probably guessed, Ren's fishing was limited to the bank as his gear was still somewhere trying to catch up with us. Unfortunately, most of my early moments were spent on the bank as well, since my third cast went high into a tree. I spent most of the first 30 minutes trying to cut it out (the fly, leader, and at least 5 ft. of the fly line were up there). Below are pictures of each of us fishing. The first one is Elwood, unfortunately all I have is the back of him. Remember that net as it will come into play later.













The next one is Ren. As you can see, the lack of waders kept him confined to the bank, but it didn't discourage him from getting into the river. I'm not sure what he is looking at. It might be one of those flying fish.












The next one is me.














They look just like scenes from A River Runs Through It, don't they? After a few hours, Ren decided that he ought to call the hotel just to see if his luggage might have arrived.

Since the cell phone was in the car, I gave him the keys so he could go call. As we had walked down the river quite a bit I told him to drive the car down to the next pull off. Now there are several reasons not to let Ren drive your company car in a foreign country, but despite that I gave him the keys with a few instructions and he was on his way.

For those of you still thinking of all the reasons not to let Ren drive the car, I will just go ahead and give you the number one reason.

HE WILL PUT IT IN THE DITCH!!

As Ren points out in the photo below, it happened. These photos are after several benevolent Scottish people pushed him out. Fortunately I came up from the river just in time to catch the aftermath. All I could see were several people and cars huddled around my car. On my way to see what was going on (imagining the worst) I passed someone, who appeared to be in his work clothes, covered in mud and swearing under his breath. As I approached the crowd around my car I could see that the car was intact, albeit a little muddy. Apparently he had gotten too far over, while trying to get out of the way of the other cars, and ended up in the ditch. The muddy guy was the victim of Ren gassing the car too much while the guy was trying to push him out

In Ren's defense we hadn't seen more than 2 cars the whole day, and as soon as he pulled out cars appeared from both directions. This was exacerbated by the fact that it was only a one lane road.

After the car was rescued from the ditch, we learned that he was unable to reach the hotel. We decided that we would go down to the southern portion of the river and fish for a little while before going back to check on the luggage.

Ren wasn't the only one having problems that day. Now as you may have seen, I was wearing hip waders. For anyone who has ever worn them, you know you have to be careful or you can easily go too far into the river and then you are wet. Well I didn't go too far in, but while I was getting out (to go back to the hotel, after several hours of staying dry), I slipped on a rock and my left leg filled with water. You can see me checking out the water below.











The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. We went back to the hotel, where half of Ren's luggage was waiting in the room. Fortunately for him, it was the half with his waders and other fishing gear.

After a brief celebration by Ren, and a search for plastic bags and dry socks to wrap my feet in, we headed back to the river, for another 7 hours of fishing.

posted by Yankee @ 5:33 PM