Lake of Menteith, day session, 20 May
Conditions were near to perfect, if you didn't mind it being a bit damp -- a moderate south easterly and 100% ceiling all day. We witnessed about the best hatch of claret duns we've ever seen. Add to that a smattering of mayflies, olives, alders, hawthorns, black gnats and other assorted terrestrials, and we had all the makings of a good day's fishing for feeding residents, rather than pulling lures for stockies. (Not that we didn't have a go at that as well, but the stockies seemed to be taking the day off!)
Jimmy with a typical slimmed-down, Menteith resident
Four of our 6 boats had success with imitative tactics. Steve G and Tommy S took 13 between them on dry fly, up at the plantation. Steve's hare's ear hopper was their stand out pattern. Meanwhile, Dougie S and Stu B were stalking rising fish in the butts bay, also on dries, and they had 15 between them, their stand out pattern being a claret Shipman.
Jimmy M and I found a group of fish feeding in a food lane that developed in the lee of Inchmaholme Island. We focused on the claret duns that were being taken and got into the fish with small, dark CDC F-flies. This group proved to be composed almost entirely of overwintered fish and long-term residents. And when they have a full tail and no excess body fat, they go a bit!
Another pair of jaggy-tailed residents -- sorry about the (over) auto-exposure!
Most interesting development of the day was that with the way things panned out, catches-wise, between us and the other clubs that were out, you wouldn't have given tuppence for the chance of putting a bag together on subsurface tactics. And on nymphs? No way! So, just to put a spanner in the works, Allan E took 9 fish on a pair of olive and hare's ear snatchers! They were fished on the slime line, on the drop, in shallow water, from Lochend to International Bay.
The Club's total for 12 rods was 53 fish for 116 lb 12 oz, plus 2 returned.
