Saturday, 3rd September

Lake of Menteith, Day Session

Weather forecast wrong again, but we were most glad it was.  Instead of the unbroken sunshine and stiff southerly they predicted, we had about 50% cloud cover, with a light easterly, a.m. turning to a light to moderate southerly, p.m.  The Lake had been fishing well, and was full of fish, so no excuses if we couldn't catch some.  The clarity looked good as well, and there was evidence of large hatches of Dixa spp buzzers:  loads of shucks on the water.  The fish had also been feeding on shield bugs and various other terrestrials, including daddies.

Steve Greig with the first of the day -- a fin-perfect blue

The main spread of fish seemed to be from the rookery, out and round the reeds by Sam's point and down the hotel shore, right to the harbour, round by the launch pier and the pink buoy (that isn't there) and out from the shoulder of the road shore.  However, top bag of the day, the 14 taken by Jimmy Millar, came from off the peninsula, the gap between the islands, and the heronry.  Jimmy took his early fish figure-of-eighting a damsel on a floater, but switched to dries when he and boat partner Alan Morrison went into the quiet water in the heronry to look for risers.  Jimmy reports:  "You could have been forgiven for thinking there were none there unless you sat quietly and waited for them to appear.  The fish further east seemed reluctant to take a dry properly, but the heronry fish were much more obliging."  Jimmy used a claret klinkhammer to target the risers.

"Never mind the bloke pointing the camera at you, John... gonnae net ma fish?"

Many of the others echoed Jimmy's comments about the fish at the eastern end being difficult to take on dries.  Earlier in the week, John Miller and I had been out and I found the fish ignoring my smaller, slimmer dries, while they wellied John's bushy hopper.  With daddies and shield bugs about, they were maybe looking for a good mouthful when they got fed up with eating Dixa shucks.  So... me and Steve Greig set out with size 10 bushy hoppers... and for a while it worked great.  We took 5 each on our first drift -- a great long one from the hotel to the rookery.  However, after our early success, someone turned the house lights up and after that we found we needed a switch to pulling to keep the landing net busy.  A bit of trial and error produced the best combo of: floating line, figure-of-eight retrieve, slim nymphs on the droppers and a goldhead lure on the tail (yellow dancer was a good one).  Eventually they went off all that malarkey and we had our last bit of action with dries and nymphs out from the shoulder.

Originally seen only at Loch Leven, Wayners have spread over much of Scotland, and are now a common sight at Menteith

Alan Holbrook was another to crack it with the eastern end fish and the dries, as he took 11 along the road shore on a claret hopper.  John Gibson and Fraser Gault also fished the road shore, and along to the quarry.  They had half a dozen to boobies and nymphs.  The 2 Johns, Miller and Robertson took 7 at Sam's point and Gateside bay, to hoppers in claret, black and ginger... and orange blob and yellow dancer.

Poor Eric Singer broke his arm -- we wish him a speedy recovery -- so Ken Cockburn fished on his own.  Ken stuck to wee traditionals and showed they still take fish, as he landed 4 and lost as many again, to butcher and Wickham's in size 14.

The Club's 17 rods landed 77 fish.  I think we had about as many blues as rainbows.   The blues are cracking fish!

Photos:  Canon 10D with Sigma 28-300 mm lens, polarising and ND grad filters