The Allan Water is controlled by the Allan Water Angling Improvement Association, you can buy permits by the day from the Dunblane post office or join the waiting list for the association. The waiting list to join is a about a year but this venue is members only on a saturday.
We fished the upper pools on beat 1. The pools are up near braco just before the hotel. We only used Fly Fishing as our method although you can spin for Salmon and Trout
Salmon Fishing
Equipment - Single Handed AirFlow, SLS Fly Rod.
Location
There is no need for wading at this location as the river is not a large river. You can fish from the Far bank with ease. However this water really needs to have a lot of rain before it fishes well. The banks are clean and well maintained and the water quality is excellent
Flies – Stoat Tail and Pot Belly Pig.
We fished for a number of hours, without much luck and decided to change fly to a pot belly pig, within half an hour I had managed to land a 6lb Grilse. It took me over half and hour to land the fish. (We returned the fish safely to the river) I can see now why the Pot Belly Pig is such a popular fly.
Trout Fishing
Equipment – 6/7 9ft 6 Trout Fly Rod with Floating Line
Flies – Dry Fly and Wet Flies (the day we fished just about anything was catching)
The Fishing
We found this river to teaming with lots of small brown trout about 6inch long which must be viewed as an encouraging site, in fact we managed to catch around 20 (all of which were safely returned to the water)
We found We had Great Success with Wet Flies and Small Size 16 Dry Flies. We generally had the dry fly on the top dropper and the wet on the point.
Overall
A nice clean venue, ideal for in-experienced Fly Fishing, Easy Access and Depending on the weather a good chance of a salmon. This is a great place to learn how to fish on a river.
On the things to note about this venue is the fact that they actually stock the river with brown trout to supplement the natural fish stocks. I did notice large amounts of small brown trout about 1 - 2 inches in size, which is a real positive as it means the the natural fish are spawning and this can only result in making the venue and even better trout fishing mark.
