Saturday, 5th May

Lindores Loch, Evening Session

A wee window in the weather was afforded to us -- sandwiched between the cold easterly winds of the last 3 weeks, and the rain and gales that came in... er, later tonight!  Conditions were best early evening -- dull, warm, light breeze.  Just about the time you were looking for it to calm away, the incoming front pushed quite a stiff breeze ahead of it, and that kind of took the edge off things.

It was a strange sort of evening.  Dougie Skedd went with dries and stayed on them all evening.  That was the right thing to do, but on the first drift out and across, he saw loads of fish rising and had quite a few fresh-air shots, but had no actual hook-ups.  I had the advantage of a boat to myself, and I also started on dries.  Given the chance to cover 360 degrees, I stayed close to the head of the wind at the railway shore looking for risers, and I also found it a bit slow-going at first.  I picked up the other rod and had a go figure-of-eighting with neutral density suspenders, and that was worth a single fish.

Dougie Skedd into a lively one

Then I saw Dougie's rod bent, then again with another.  I went back to dries and went out into open water.  Sure enough, they had come on with a vengeance.  A drift from the big willow on the railway shore, out and down towards the reedy island took me through hundreds of rising fish.  It was a medium-sized dark buzzer that was getting them up.  I was drawing nothing out-the-blue, but for about every half dozen rises covered, one would take.  I was on 2 black flies and one claret -- all smallish 12s.  The fish were picking out the black ones.  Claret was doing nothing at all.  I took off the claret and went 3 black (Klinkhammer, F-fly, hopper).  Straight away the new member of the team started catching.  I ran out of fish towards the island, and went back up, intending to repeat the drift.  But, by now the wind was freshening, and changing direction, and my next drift took me along the railway shore, close in to the side.

A rare sight -- no one fishing Milanda Bay

Here were hundreds more rising fish!  Same story -- nothing out-the-blue, but covers were meeting with a decent level of approval.  Several were long-range shots.  My eyesight is not what it used to be, and I could not see if the fish that rose where I had cast to actually had my fly, so I had to lift slowly to see if everything tightened up.  On several occasions it didn't have it, but the movement of my flies drew a reflex reaction from, not necessarily just one fish, but sometimes 2 or 3.  One would go for my fly.  That would spook a second one close to it, which would spook a 3rd, which would spook the first fish that had been going to take my fly.  Doh!  Other times, the wee lift would have the effect of inducing 2 takes at once.  They were V lively, and 6 lb Tectan was not up to coping with double-ups.  I lost 8 flies and went through 4 casts in the course of the evening!

The sport tailed off quickly once the light was failing -- couldn't see my flies by this time anyway.  Back at the harbour, comparing notes with Dougie -- he's fished nothing but 2 claret flies all night (claret Shipman and claret Klinkhammer).  So much for my black vs claret theory!  Dougie had found that figure-of-eighting his dries was getting him more action, which did fit in with my experiences of the fish going bananas when I lifted slowly.

Fraser Gault into one in the fading light

I felt that it was most absolutely definitely a night for drifting, and that anyone who anchored was putting themselves at a disadvantage...  except maybe if you were to anchor just out from the big willow -- right at the confluence of those two lines of fish -- which is exactly where Fraser Gault and Bob Temple set up stall.  They switched between nymphs and dries before finally settling on dries.  They had fish to Diawl Bach and black buzzers, then to black and claret Shipmans.

Tommy Steven, John Levy and john Miller all fished a mixture of nymphs, wets and dries over the course of the evening, taking fish to buzzers, and again black and claret Shipmans.  Len Newby had fish to good old trads: silver invicta and coachman.

The club's 9 rods caught 43 fish.

Photos: Canon 10D

Images 1, 2 and 4 = Canon 70-300mm IS

Image 3 = Sigma 10-20mm