I am abroad until mid October and will be in only sporadic contact with my email therefore this report will remain unchanged until I return.

Please have a go on our new Forum, this platform was introduced to get some interesting discussion moving about the river. If the Forum is not user friendly please tell me why ( on the Forum ) or simply hit the "comments" link on this page and we will improve the format. 

The last week of the season has so far been difficult as we have missed out on all the rain again....story of the season! The good news is that it looks like the Opening days of 2014 will be 4 free public fishing days from Saturday 11th to Wednesday 15th excluding Sunday. I'll now be looking for an invite down to the Tweed in the meantime!

I had the pleasure of creating a new fly for the recently born Royal baby a couple of weeks ago, check out the article here  -  http://www.northern-times.co.uk/News/Helmsdale-fly-tier-creates-unique-salmon-fly-for-new-baby-prince-20092013.htm

The river had a stunning week last week with probably over 200 fish off. The week started off with lots of rain but nothing apart from a very slow weedy 2" creep entered the river. A few fish came off but nothing special, then the river lifted a little more to around 8" by Wednesday which seemed to spark the river into action. The highlight was 25 fish off beat 1 to Suisgill rods followed by around 20 to Kildonan rods on the same beat, lots of fish were hanging around on the lower beats and many were on the move to the upper river to their spawning grounds. A sprinkling of fresh fish were also caught throughout the river.

Top scores for the week were around 58 to Suisgill and over 40 to the Wiggington party on Achentoul who unluckily also lost around the same number. The Association water had a good day on the Wednesday with around a dozen fish off. I took the liberty of an extended lunch hour and had 3 on a Willie Dog conehead, William Jappy had 3 and Johnny Hardy had 3 in the Flat pool on a Sunray. Mick Buttery added one as did Peter Macmillan and I heard of another. Alistair Jappy had 2 on Monday and William 1, I also had a bar of silver Tuesday. The week ended on the Local water with around 20 and a super week on the river all round.

This weeks special offer is free lines flies with any rod purchased, as you know we have all types of Mackenzie DTX and Perflex rods on offer along with the amazing new Loop Cross S1. Make casting easy and treat yourself to a hot new setup!

Another awesome new range of flies have been added to our collection and we will be taking forward orders, let me know what you think of them by starting a thread on our Angling Forum - (first 6 comments get freebees to try out!!) Skullheads have an even more dynamic shape than the standard coneheads and look amazing in the water, I have been testing them from conception and they can cartainly catch the fish! As soon as I saw them on baitfish flies I knew they would catch salmon in freshwater on tubes and I was hot onto the vice to design a range.

Pre-order the full set or a half set for Christmas on doubles or trebles, these are the coolest new salmon tubes on the market.

RS Skullheads