The Ballo, day session, 19th August.
(click on flies for photos)
The US commentator and general wag, Bill Bryson, writing about his visit to Scotland, likened it to living inside a giant Tupperware box: every direction you look is a uniform gray. Well Bill, this was the day for you!
The morning consisted of drizzle and low cloud. In the afternoon the cloud lifted to give, eh... heavy rain! Not to worry, these conditions were still preferable to the killer of Ballo: a hooly. In fact, it was almost flat calm at times.
The fish were rising all over the place as we headed out of the harbour, and some rods were straight into them. Others struggled a.m., only to put a bag together in the afternoon -- by which time the early catchers had run out of steam. There was loads of fly life to get the fish on top, and dry fly was very much the order of the day, with all our top bags coming to dries. Catching patterns, in sizes 12 to 16, included black CDC F-fly, black raider, black PW bits and black beetle. Top bag on the day was taken by Tommy S, fishing a size 14 sedge pattern.
Fish came from all over the water, with no area outstanding. The main hatches were an assortment of sedges, but there were one or two big buzzers coming off and some terrestrials falling too. Strangely, although there was no sign of any lake olives, the fish I spooned contained large quantities of lake olive shucks. The other regular item in them was small sticklebacks. It might have been that when the heaviest of the rain drove the fish down they turned to the sticklebacks, because they were very hard to interest in nymphy stuff.
The rainbows were a nice range of sizes, up to 3 lb, with the emphasis on fish of about 1 lb 4-6 oz. This is too small for many anglers these days, but it is the ideal size for a water like Ballo: the ones that survive the early stockie bash are not too big to make a living off the amount of food available. That allows the establishment of a resident head of feeding fish. And before you know it... hey, a real fishery!
Tommy's bag was 8 rainbows for 9 lb 10 oz with one good brownie returned, while the club's total for 15 rods was 38 fish for 50 lb 7 oz plus 7 good brownies and many smaller brownies returned.
