Loch Leven, evening session, 15th July.

(click on flies for photos)

The Loch seems to be taking it's own sweet time in getting going with the best of the evening fishing.  The weather can't be helping, and we had another wonderful assortment of conditions to cope with.  It started with a fresh easterly, the Forth having been like a millpond earlier in the day.  We started at the sluices: Get to the head of the wind!.  And immediately the wind dropped.  Let's get into the breeze, we thought, and headed out to the east point of St Serf's.  No sooner were we there, but fish were rising all over the place, and John was into a good rainbow, first cast.

Get the dries on, thought I.  As soon as I was tackled up, the sun came out and the fish went down.  Ah well, back to pulling!  The sun went in and the fish came back on the go, and we added 2 rainbows, both to fast glass and size 10 wets: Dunkeld variant and black/green/gold.  Other boats in the area were into fish as well, and we saw rods on hi-viz floaters into fish.  But, the activity soon waned, and all went serene.  We took the plunge and headed down the loch to look for surface activity.  No sooner had we dropped in on Paddy's point, than the portents of doom loomed over the horizon...

The wind turned to the north to bring this stuff in, and went Baltic in the process.  It looked so much better where we had just come from that we decided to head back up there!  We stopped off to get shelter on the deep side of St Serf's, between west point and Dunlop bay.  That took us on a course out towards the shoulder between Carden Bay and Duncan's Corner.  Here, all of a sudden, were feeding fish.  John lost a good one that ran under the boat before jumping out the back and throwing the hook, while I took 2 rainbows; one to the black/green/gold and one to a red muddler.   We missed a few chances as well out there, some of which were doubtless wee brownies.  All the fish we caught were on the same stuff: green micro buzzers, green water mites, green copepod/daphnia type thingies, wee green eel worms, green weed, everything was green apart from a few big Leven buzzer pupes.

It wasn't a great total for the club.  We had only 7 rainbows and 2 browns for 19 lb 9 oz to 13 rods.  I would add though, that the quality of the rainbows was quite simply trout perfection.