Sunday, 1st May
Carron Valley Reservoir, Day Session
The forecast was for some rain on Saturday, followed by brighter weather, and mixed sunshine and showers on Sunday. Wrong, wrong, wrong! Saturday was the warmest, sunniest day of the year so far, and Sunday, at least through Carron Valley Reservoir way, was wet, wet, wet. However, when it comes to fishing for wild brownies, you would settle for that if the alternative was sun, sun, sun. You just have to be up to taking a drooking. Wind, in the west on Saturday for a single day out the last 30 or so, was back to east! Not quite so cold, thankfully. So, were the brownies up for it? Yes.
Good buzzer hatches were in evidence, and the fish were obviously tuned in, with spoonings revealing plenty of pupae, a few adults, and some bits and pieces including stone flies and snails. Depth an issue? Well, yes and no. For most of the day, the fish seemed deep to me, as a change from DI-3 to Hi-D increased the catch rate considerably. However, others caught with slime line and even floater. Later in the day the rain eased, the wind dropped to almost calm, and a huge hatch of buzzers got the fish right up top. We played it out up the far end and so committed to spending the whole last half hour motoring for home. We ran past riser after riser, way out in the middle, the whole length of the water.
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With it raining most of the day,
chances to get the camera out were few and far between. Here's a
couple of shots that show the sort of wacky weather with which we had to
contend. The one on the left is a bit noisy -- a result of having
almost no contrast at all to work with until Photoshop came to the rescue. Click on image for larger size. |
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Three areas came to the fore for catches. These were the home shore, from the harbour to gull island; Binns Bay; and Carron Bay and the shoreline beyond, though George W and Steve G bucked the trend, by getting their fish along the south shore. They fished slime line and damsels during the rain, and went to size 16 dry flies when the rise came on.
The huge buzzer hatch showed why the wildies are already well-filled out
Ian Mac and son Gavin boated 26 between them (dad getting a slight upper hand after last week's showing up at Linlithgow). They fished the home shoreline, with slime lines, pulling with snatchers, claret hopper and clan chief. Ivor and Len fished the same area, catching to Connemarra black on floating line.
Better red than Skedd, or something like that
Dougie S and Alan M went up the top, as did we. Alan had the best of his sport in Carron Bay, pulling wets, while Dougie had most of his catch to dries. Adrian C and Allan E fished the same area, catching to WetCel I and floater, with black spiders, bibio, hare's ear in size 14s. Our fish came to Hi-D and size 12 Kate variant, size 10 hare's ear palmer and a black Howwood.
Tommy and JSB matched the Macs' 26 to the boat. They fished Binns bay, pulling earlier with jungle cock Viva and trads on WetCel II and DI-3, and going to dry fly (black Bob's bits) in the later rise.
The Club's 18 rods landed a total of 129 keepable fish, of which 108 were returned to fight again another day.
