Friday, 13th July
Glencorse, Evening Session
John Miller gets his hood down during the 5 minute spell when it almost wasn't raining
Another unremittingly dreich outing! It looked great conditions all day as well. Just as we arrived, back of 4 p.m., the first spots of rain started to fall. And that was it. It rained the whole damned evening, apart from a 5 minute spell when it almost didn't. Apart from the rain, conditions were good for dries, and I had been out the previous Friday evening, and it had been all dries then, so Dougie Skedd and I went for that. When it's raining, you can never be arsed getting everything soaked changing methods, so you just set your stall up and hope for the best.
Dougie Skedd puts the anchors on one that tries the 'get under the boat' ploy
We worked our way up the water, getting scant interest until we got into the narrow channel leading up to the far bay. Here we gradually started to see the odd rise and to pull the odd fish up. The previous week, in windier conditions, I had found a big size 10 really bushy black hopper had been by far the best pattern and I went with a less dramatic version of the same thing. That worked again, this time with a black Shipman (12) sharing the spoils. Dougie was getting his fish to a deer hair emerger.
The sport increased going into the top bay, and for a while we were getting a steady run of offers, many of which were non-committal about taking the fly down. Eventually 3 boats were doing the same drift and the fish didn't take kindly to that. We backed off, down the channel again, and here, about mid-evening we found a bunch of fish on the pop. We could see straight away the characteristic rushing hither and thither type rises that say one thing: Caenis nymphs!
Contact! 1: A pure fluke on my part. I was taking a photo of John and John while they were straight behind us, and as I pressed the shutter, a fish took John M's dry fly. On seeing the rise, John lifted, just as the shutter opened for the shot, so catching the moment of tightening into the fish.
Contact! 2: Despite the slightly shaky-looking purchase, John successfully hooks the fish -- who just made it into the frame and no more.
(The second shot, taken 1/3 sec after the first, is generally sharper and has less line movement due to it being 1/180 sec, compared to 1/90 sec for the first shot. The 2 different exposures were balanced in Photoshop)
It wasn't a Caenis evening, and we didn't see many duns in the air, but the nymphs must have been up having a think about it, at least. The fish certainly were in a different mood now, and I was kindly invited to poke my big dries where the sun clearly never shines. Dougie was still getting success with his deer hair emerger, which he now had teamed with a grey Shipman. I switched to a 12 half-hog on the tail with 2 size 14 Shipmans, in hare's ear and ginger. That brought sport back online for a bit, although eventually it tailed off as the light went even more dim than it had been all evening... and the temperature dropped... and the risers stopped. The ba' was on the slates!
The Force was with Obi-Wan Skedd
John Miller and John Levy had fished around about us all evening. John M fished dries, taking a brace of 3 lb plus rainbows to black and claret hoppers, while John Levy fished wets (doobry and snatchers) on floating line. John also had a pair of rainbows, plus loads of sport with the wee wild brownies. Ron McCarron and John Robertson fished further back, and had a bit of sport to yellow dancer and Diawl Bach (not fished together!). Our other 2 boats decided it wasn't a night for stopping out -- fair enough!
The six rods that did stick it out to the end had 18 fish.
Photos: Canon 10D with 28-135 IS lens. It was a challenge to get any kind of photographic record on this one. They would have been sharper if not for two things:
1 The light was about 2 candle power all night, so shutter speeds were very slow, even with the ISO hiked up
2 I didn't realise the image stabiliser was switched off until I got home. Doh!
