Loch Leven, evening session, 14th August.

Hopes were high for a cracking night.  John W and Jimmy M had been out the previous Thursday and had had 11 brownies for well over 20 lb, all taken to top of the water stuff: dry fly and lightweight buzzers.  Tonight was breezier but otherwise very similar: warm and very dull overhead.  But, this being Leven, just when you think you are making friends with the place, it reminds you who is boss.

Within just 10 minutes, we realised that the fish were not responding the way they were last week.  Further down the drift we started to wonder about where we might go to find fish...  or should we stay and wait for them to come up.  We toughed it out, waiting for them.  A mistake, as we ended up with a pittance of offers and just one fish and one lost for the boat.  There was a noticeable lack of fly life until it was really too late to be of much use.  And yet, one of our boats fishing in the same area recorded loads of chances... but they ended up clean (worse, their outboard cut-off switch broke and they had to row from the north shore to Reed bower before they got a tow!)

Great conditions, but where were the fish?

At the weigh in, the tale was much the same for most folk, with only 4 rainbows and 4 browns being weighed in for 17 rods (plus 5 browns returned).  The 4 rainbows were a good weight, mind: 11 lb 6 oz.  Fraser had 2 of them, the better at 4 lb 2 oz, taken on a hare's ear CDC shuttlecock.  These were got drifting from Kelson towards Reed Bower.  John M proved there's life in the old butchers yet, with a 3 lb plus rainbow and a 2 lb plus brown taken to kingfisher and bloody aforementioneds (you don't need photographs of these!) .  John's fish were taken on floating line in the Carden Bay area.  Elsewhere in the bags, a couple of fish were taken to claret hoppers.