Saturday, 10th April

Lake of Menteith, Day Session

A very calm, very overcast day.  And with a superb hatch of early season buzzers (the ones we call Scottish blends -- this seems to be a bumper season for them) it looked on for some early season dry fly fishing.  However, the number of fish on the go was always a wee bit on the scarce side, making the turning of dreams into reality another matter.  The fish that were on the go (mostly way out in the middle) were very hard to tempt with dries and we had to try a few different ideas with them.  Jimmy M eventually sorted them out with a size 14 black Bob's bits, taking 3, plus another one on a dark F-fly.  In between spells on the dries, we tried nymphy approaches, and we managed one fish to each of: damsel, black Howwood, Diawl Bach and suspender buzzer.

There were some big fish on the go, and we had 3 over 4 lb in our catches, 2 of them to dries.  We had some nice overwintered fish as well, including this one to Alan M (photo by JSB).  Jimmy had this pristine wee blue in his catch.

Jimmy returns an overwintered rainbow, taken on dry fly

Elsewhere, there was a massive build up of boat activity over where the pike nets used to be.  We counted 16 boats strung out along the shoreline, very close in.  We could see the odd fish getting caught, but we decided 16 was enough for one area and we declined to get involved.

Among our own rods, JW Robertson and Dougie G had 5 to boobies -- including coral and yellow/orange -- and fast sink lines in the hotel bay/harbour area.  JSB had 2 early on to slime line and a wee Viva in the heronry.  Trevor and Tommy seemed to spend the day pike fishing, taking several to 9 pound.  Trevor did bag a couple of trout on lures, to slime line; one at the butts and one in Hotel Bay.

The club's total for 12 rods was 21 fish.