Sadly, I missed this outing, as I was attending the funeral of Club Member, and life-long fisherman, Gordon Grant.  A gentler, more easy-going man would be hard to find.  Gordon was secretary of the Norhet Angling Club for 14 years and also had long associations and official duties with the Cramond Angling Club.  He will be missed by all who knew him.  With others from our Club at Gordon's funeral, this outing was reduced to 2 boats.

Dougie Skedd reports...

On the way up to 'Tombstone', the weather was suitably dreich for what could turn out to be the last trip to the once famous venue by our Club.  The word in the howf was that the loch was fishing a bit, with some reasonable catches being weighed in.  The advice from Michael Wilson was that, given the wind direction (east), the ledge that runs from the elbow to the east buoy would be the best bet.  An honourable mention was also given to the infamous pipe area.

My boat partner, John Miller and I decided to try the east buoy/horseshoe drifts.  On each of our first two drifts, as we passed over the ledge, a fish took hold.  Two drifts, two decent wild fish!  Not bad for the 'Double-L' these days.  Was this to be a red letter day?  It was not.  We had been seeing fish priming in the area since we started fishing.  Now we were seeing nothing and were getting no interest from the trout.  A move was in order.  We motored along the line of buoys to the other end of the ledge and fished from the north buoy to the elbow -- without result.  We saw a number of boats in the 'pipe' area and decided to see if we could get a bit of sport -- albeit from stockies.  On our way over we saw our other boat and they revealed that they had caught only one fish.  The reason for the boat activity immediately became apparent when we arrived.  A large number of fish were running up the hatchery burn, probably attracted by the rise in water level brought about by the overnight rain.  These fish had only one thing on their minds -- and it wasn't flies!  However, a bit further out a few fish were showing.  These guys refused the dry flies that were offered, but a few were prepared to grab at John's pulled trads.  Three joined us in the boat.  And that was it.

All things considered, the day was very disappointing.  We would have expected better from perfect conditions: solid overcast, steady breeze and although it was a bit cool, it is September.  At the end of the day, all our fish came to wets on a DI-3: two on a clan chief, one on a Kate McLaren and two on a Dunkeld variant.  The other boat's fish is a mystery to me, although I know it weighed 1 lb 5oz.