Hoddom Beat River Annan

This was day 2 of our road trip and the agenda was a visit to the popular and famous Hoddom beat on the River Annan. We should have been full of optimism and anticipation but the reality was that the conditions were very poor for salmon fishing. The lack of rain meant the river level was only 2 inches above the lowest summer height and the Fishpal website showed that no salmon had been caught in the 5 days of this week.
We parked up and entered the gatehouse where the ghillies are based and any optimism we had was finally dampened when the ghillie said it had been fishing crap and today was unlikely to improve on that.
The beat is over 4 miles long so Colin and I elected to go upriver and fish our way back down. We took the car the short trip to Mainholm and parked up near the footbridge and walked up to the beat boundary.

Looking up river Horse Pool

This area down to the footbridge has some lovely stretches of water where salmon will lie but not today. My initial mistake was not to take my wading stick as the water was low. But the ongoing low water and the sun were perfect conditions for algae growth and I could hardly keep my feet. There was no danger of drowning but a broken limb was a strong possibility if one fell on these rocks. My second mistake was taking the double handed rod, the water was not good for this.
Already sweating in the blazing sun I hiked back to the car to change to my single hander rod, get rid of a layer of clothing, apply sun lotion and grab my stick. A fair bit of wasted time.

Looking downriver from footbridge

We fished the stretch down to the foot bridge and then onwards towards the lodge where we met the rest for lunch. There were a couple more anglers on this stretch but they had no luck either. Some of the water is awkward to get access to a few slides down the embankments. A couple of small brown trout had been caught but no salmon. 
Over lunch, fancy name for a salad roll and a bag of crisps, Rabbie did say he saw one big salmon leap at the other boundary at Scales Pool so refreshed, Colin and I took the long walk to there to fish back up to the lodge. However as we tackled up again I realised no landing net, it had presumably came off on one of my bank slides. A quick rush back to Mainholm and a walk up the banking and luckily there it was at one of the points I slid down to access the river. 
On the walk down the banking here is covered in Hymalayan balsam, an invasive parasitic plant that will take over and destroy all other vegetation as well as erode the banking. Much work is required here to halt its progress.
Scales pool narrowed well and in the low water a salmon would breach it moving upriver but nothing for us to see. Colin saw a seatrout on the next beat but it never showed for us.

The beat boundary

We then fished Ducks pool which looked an ideal holding spot, deeper water just below a weir with a good sandy bottom for wading. After thrashing about for a while with no success I left the water to speak to a couple of the guys at the car park and suddenly behind me a big swirl right in the area I had been fishing. A few curses, back in but no joy.

Looking up river towards Calvert's pool

A final few casts at the Churchyard pool but again no success and the water was very low.
One advantage of the low water is seeing where the lies are and where you can wade safely in better higher water conditions. No success today but another place to return to with better fishing knowledge of the water.