Saturday, 15th October

Lake of Menteith, Day Session

A superb day for the last competitive outing of the season -- albeit of mixed conditions.  It started cloudy and calm, went to sunny and calm, then to sunny with a slight ripple, then to cloudy with a moderate east/south easterly breeze, then to cloudy with a slight ripple.  Douglas's top tip area-wise was the crannog to Sam's point -- and that's exactly where we found the most fish.  The water was gin-clear and there were buzzers hatching (been loads and loads of buzzers on The Lake this back end).

Hackneyed, yes, but it is always tempting when you get the conditions!

Most of us gave dries a good go, but whereas in the past month or so they have been working well, there was something in the fishes' behaviour today that made them damned tricky to catch on dries.  Ian Mac and I spent about a third of the day on dries for a total of about half a dozen assorted swirls, looks and fresh-air shots.  Allan Everington and Bob Temple found plenty of risers on a run from the peninsula across the back of the islands, but like most folk they found them hard to take on dries.  Eventually Allan found some success on a wee river spider pattern.  Dougie Skedd and John Gibson found it equally hard going.  As we were giving up on the residents in the heronry and took our leave, they came in at our back.  At least they managed a couple to a size 14 claret Shipman.  John Miller was another to persevere with dries, taking a brace to a claret hopper in hotel bay/Sam's point area.  Jimmy Millar and Fraser Gault thought they had struggled with dries -- because they only caught 9 fish between them!  I thought that was superb, given how tricky we had found them.  Jimmy and Fraser got the bulk of their fish off Shear point, to claret Klinkhammer, size 14 black Bob's bits and size 14 black shuttlecock CDC.

Late morning, someone turned up the house lights

The bulk of our fish were taken, as mentioned above, around the area of the crannog to Sam's point.  Alan Holbrook and Trevor left it late to get tuned in, but they eventually took 4 each to orange blobs on slime lines.  It was a similar late show for Steve Grieg and guest Bob Whyte, who took 6 between them to white tadpoles on intermediate and floating line.  Ian Mac and I relied on the same area for our sport.  I went with ghost tip and Ian went with a slime line.  We tuned in to a method of 2 sombre nymphs on the droppers and a goldhead tadpole on the tail.

Looks like the tourist season is just about over

Now, for anyone with a view on whether rainbows and blues behave the same or different...  our first 8 fish in the boat consisted of 5 blues and 3 rainbows.  All 5 blues went to one rod, and all 3 rainbows went to the other.  Maybe just coincidence?  After that, the sequence broke for both of us.  Our killing flies were black snatcher, white tadpole and yellow dancer.  Ian killed 5 fish for a mighty 14 lb.  No wonder we were thinking they were hard to bring to the net!

Ian's smallest fish of the day was the most residential

2005 Club champion Tommy Steven had to go off home at about 4 o'clock, as he was not feeling well -- no doubt the result of having been in quite a bad car crash just the day before.  Tommy recorded 4 on yellow booby and Hi-D in the same area before he went off.

The club's total for 16 rods was 46 fish.

We retired to Poppies hotel, Callander, for our annual meal and (curtailed) prize-giving ceremony (in addition to being club Champion, Tommy took the Cronies' Quaich trophy for the season's biggest fish: an 8 pounder from Linlithgow).  After an excellent meal, Club President John Gibson presented Dougie Skedd with Tam's Trophy, for runner-up, and Alan Holbrook with the Singer Seniors' trophy.

Photos: Canon 10D with 28-135 mm IS lens and ND grad filter