Saturday, 21st October

Linlithgow Loch, Day Session

Not much happening

Two reasons this is traditionally a good one for taking a few photos... For one, this is the annual outing that coincides with the autumn colours -- the reds, golds, oranges and chestnuts that make up for the fact that winter drawers-on.  The other is that the sun is now so low during the day that you get quality light for free.  Well, forget the first one this time... everything was still green!  Cue more murmurings about global warming and all that stuff...  Got the quality light OK, but didn't get much opportunity to use it!

The weather was just amazing for late October...  warm, sunny, calm.  Also hard to believe was that the water was still badly affected by algae.  The word was that it was clearer up the east end shallows, and that one of the regulars had been out during the week and had had a good bag up there on floating line and snatchers.

All smiles (at the start of the day, at least)

We headed up there, and had an early fish ourselves, to a static-fished candy-stripe snatcher.  A guy out on his own had a couple of fish in the same area, so we settled in and expected to get some sport.  Nothing else followed, however.  We were patient... very patient.  Still nothing more.  We tried different stuff.  There were a good half dozen boats up there, and no one was doing anything... except the guy on his own, who took another.  He was slow figure-of-eighting a floating line -- nothing we (and those around us) hadn't been doing ourselves.

Time wore on.  Still nothing, and the other boats started to peel-off and head west.  The guy on his own took another.  We decided we needed to try fresh ground, so headed west too.  As we left, the guy on his own took another.

Up west, we ran into all the boats that had abandoned the east, plus all those who had stayed west.  We checked in with Trevor and Alan, who had but one fish lost to their credit.  They reported that most of the boats about them had had a few fish, and as we settled in, an odd fish was seen getting caught.  Trevor was eventually rewarded for (biblical proportion) perseverance with the 'tache, as he took 2 fish in the last hour.  A similar late grannie-saver was landed by Len Newby with his last cast of the day.  Len caught his fish on a black lure on floating line off the north-west point.

Er, sorry about the lack of options for fishy photos...

John Gibson was the only other rod in our club to land a fish.  He took one to a pink booby and DI-7 towards the north side of the west bay.  And that was it, I'm afraid.  Nine rods landed but 5 fish.  And the guy on his own up the east end?  We were told that after we left him, he continued to catch another half dozen or so.  Probably a good point at which to hang up the trout gear for the season...

Photos: Canon 10D with Sigma 28-300mm (image 1) and 10-20mm (images 2-4) lenses (some use of polarising filters was involved)