The first four days of the week saw a continuation from last weekend of the intense heat and bright overhead conditions with daily temperatures consistently in the mid-20s Celsius. Fortunately, Friday and Saturday offered some respite with increased cloud cover and a slight drop in air temperatures.

The first fish of the week was landed on Wednesday by Jeremy King, who tried something different taking an 8-pounder from beat 9 on a trout dry fly. Charles Holmes and James Pickering had a successful three-day visit with a fish each from beats 10 and 8. Gordon Wyllie's persistence was rewarded with a grilse from beat 11 on Saturday, and John Wood landed a brace of 5-pounders from beats 2 and 10.

As the week progressed it became clear that a decent number of fresh grilse have been entering the river under the cover of darkness and remaining hidden during the day, only becoming active later in the evenings and early mornings, hardly surprising considering the harsh overheads during the day.

Looking ahead to this coming week it appears the extreme heat will be less apparent, and with a few weak weather fronts in the forecast we should hopefully see more favourable overheads. Towards the end of the week we will have the largest tides of the month, and with ever increasing numbers of grilse and summer salmon accumulating in the estuary we should see some fresh fish moving into the lower beats.

Tight lines next week.