Chalk and Cheese - Torrid Tweed and Glorious Gruinard

TweedTweed - the picture says it allHorncliffe 1 looking downstreamWe had an extraordinary week on the Bottom Tweed, the complete opposite of last year when we were spated off for 4 of the 6 days. The low water - quite the lowest the boatmen had ever seen - was what we wanted to hold fish in our beats at Horncliffe and Pedwell. The downside was that the Costa Del Norham was enjoying more hours of sunshine than Marbella. The challenge wasn't fly selection, but making sure that you had adequate sunscreen and drinking water. The air temperature was consistently 25+C, while the water was uncannily warm to the touch: on most days we stopped at midday when it hit 20C. Starting at 0600 didn't improve the odds or the results.There were plenty of grilse entering the river. We had a frustrating time with their nips and tugs that rarely led to proper contact, and on the occasions it did, the combination of tissue-paper mouths and front lip hooking condemned us to lost fish. In 6 days' fishing I…