Saturday, 31st May

Loch Leven, Day Session

Prior to our first visit of the season to Leven, we had heard tales that it was fishing absolutely terrible.  Then with a week to go, the word was it was fishing its head off!  Checking up with the locals it did seem to be the case that big big catches were coming off all over the place.  Needless to say, all it needs is for the Heriot's boys to turn up to put a stop to all that sort of thing.  Word was that smallish flies on DI-3 to DI-5 were doing the biz, anywhere from the sluices, hole i' the inch, black wood, north shore and the mid and elbow buoy areas.

It was a good looking day, maybe not for the usual pulling tactics, with warm, misty, almost flat calm conditions at the start, giving way to a light south easterly and real shirt sleeve weather later on. 

A hazy start to the day, as Stu B and Dougie S head out

One look over the pier wall revealed the reason for the recent improvement -- the water was gin clear!  There were buzzers coming off as well, and a first stop at the west point had us thinking that we were on the wrong tactics -- pulling on fast sinkers -- as there was the odd rising fish and only a single follow came to the pulling stuff.  The second rods went up and we went for nymphing set-ups on floating lines.  A move to the east point saw the first fish, a rainbow, come to the static nymph approach, as it took a black spanflex buzzer on the tail.  Spooning it revealed buzzers and corixa.

One more rainbow followed, before we tried a move to the sluices.  That proved pivotal, and we added 10 more rainbows, all to the static nymph.  The takes were all subtle visuals and you had to be on red alert if you were to convert them.  Great stuff!  The fish were undoubtedly lying deep -- probably being driven down as it got brighter.  We found that early on an 18 foot set-up on double strength was OK, but that dried up, and we only got moving again with a change to 22 foot of flouro.

Nice fish, shame about the boat race (photo by AM)

Most of our fish came to buzzers on the tail position, with the black spanflex being the stand out pattern, though Jimmy M's melanistic Cove flashback was worth a couple on the dropper.

Back at the weigh-in, Dougie S and Stu B reported seeing a good rise at the north shore, though their most successful method was pulling a black cat on a DI-3.  Forbes M, also fishing at the north shore, took 3 to a goldhead mini ace of spades on a WetCel II.  Tommy S cashed on on those deep lying fish by taking 3 to a yellow booby.

The Club's total for 13 rods was 20 fish for 32 lb with 11 others returned.