Saturday, 1st September

Lake of Menteith, Day Session

Westerly gales were forecast, and while we didn't get gales, it got decidedly breezier as the day wore on.  Too rough to fish the road shore area, and so it was a case of considering the alternatives.  The best places turned out to be: tight in behind Sam's point (aka reedy point), the heronry (though this got rough later on as well), and the Butts.   Gateside Bay was a favourite (probably as it was catching most shelter) and, while it was a recommended area, it didn't produce a whole lot.

Reports had been of biblical numbers of heather flies.  I can tell you that in recent years I have become the anti-heather fly magnet.  Wherever I am they are not.  Wherever they are, I am not.  And so it was.  We saw one, which, when added to the one I saw at Glencorse a couple of weeks back makes 2 I have seen this year.  Determined, I tackled up with dry fly, going with a pearly-winged heather fly and MkII black Klinkhammer.  I wasn't 100% confident, however, and I put up a second rod with slow glass, Texas Rose muddler, hare's ear palmer and hot head damsel on the point.  Plan B was needed early doors, as the dries were a waste of effort, despite seeing plenty black gnats on the water, as we made our way up.  After drifting down the Rookery, we got into a few fish off Sam's point.  My boat partner, Len Newby was getting a lot of follows without converting.  As we drew in to the calmer water behind the point, suddenly there were fish showing all over the place, and it was worth the effort having put up 2 rods to be able to make a quick change: first cast with the dries resulted in a fish.

Len Newby with a Klinkhammer-caught resident

Although the fish stopped showing after just 5 minutes, our confidence in dries was now high, and Len changed over, going with an olive Klinkhammer and a black hopper.  We picked away at the fish in that area for the whole morning, being joined by John Wastle and Alan Duncan, who had a fairly similar story to tell to our own.  They had started with pulling (orange mini-lure and minkie on slow glass), then switched to dries (claret hopper). 

John Wastle and Alan Duncan fish the quiet water behind Sam's Point

By lunch time, the fish behind Sam's point had seen all they wanted to of our stuff, and we decided to look for fresh horses.  We went over to the Butts, where we ran into Dougie Skedd and John Miller.  They had been working away at the fish in there with dries.  John got his on claret and black hoppers, while Dougie got his on heather fly and Madam X (as you do).  Dougie was getting lots of offers, with a very poor conversion rate, while John had the the less maddening scenario of fewer offers and a near 100% conversion rate.  We picked up a single fish at the Butts before deciding it was a bit slow, and so we moved on.

Bright colours stand out like sore thumbs -- I'm sure to fish as well as people taking photographs.  Standing up -- you may as well be a flashing neon sign!

We tried a stop at the back of the promontory, where the food lane builds up on a stiff westerly.  Deadsville, so we moved on round to the heronry.  We passed Alan Morrison and Fraser Gault coming out.  They had been doing well in there with dries.  However, they signalled it had gone off -- it was very rough by now after all -- so we made our way up to the top, to the Malling shore/Dog isle area.  Nothing doing there, and decidedly stoory.  The obvious thing to try was to tuck in round behind Stable point, into the calm water.  So we did.  It was like another world there.

There was a dose of boats, and we needed to work out whether they were there because they were catching fish, or were simply sheltering.  Hmmm....  simply sheltering, it turned out.  However, we managed to pick up a couple of fish on dries in there.  We bumped into Stewart Barnes and Trevor in there.  They had got off to a great start out from international Bay, taking fish to dries (daddy-long-legs, CDC sedge and bibio CDC hopper, before it turned too rough to stay there.

One of many great-looking blues taken by our club during the day

Len had to go off at 4.30, so after dropping him off, I tried a go round towards International Bay.  Er, no way!  Far too rough.  I came back and finished off in hotel Bay and picked up a last cast fish on a CDC feather fly.

Back at the ranch, we caught up with Eric Gray and Colin Jaap, who had had sport to an orange lure on a sink tip line.

The club's 14 rods landed 44 fish.

Photos: Canon 10D with 28-135 mm IS lens