Saturday, 6th October

Lake of Menteith, Day Session

As so often happens, the quietest weather of the year falls after the autumn equinox, and we had by far our most windless outing of this, or just about any other, season.  I think we had a slight whuffle for about one minute, and the rest of the session was glass calm.  The temperature was OK for October, we had 100% ceiling, and the light was also as flat as a pancake, so there was a chance to have a day on dry fly.  It would certainly beat the pants off flogging away with sunk line on such a calm day!

Standing on the beach before the off, we could see a good dose of fish rising just off the reeds beyond the harbour where the Inchmahome launches go out from.  It's a real hot spot, and one would think that everyone who fishes The Lake would know it's a hot spot, so there should be no excuse for boats ploughing through the area at the off as they head round to International Bay.  However, that is always what happens and as the water is only a couple of feet deep, it scatters the fish and it can take hours for them to get back and settled again.   Sure as death, it happened again, so we set off to look for risers elsewhere.

Adrian Coats and Dougie Skedd get rustic in the Rookery

We headed off clockwise, which turned out to be the long way round, as we didn't find fish until we were almost back at the start -- Sam's point, to be exact.  We thought we were in for a cracker, as there were plenty of targets to shoot at, all along the reeds and down towards Hotel Bay.  However they turned out to be in a real tricky mood.  Most were only up once, so covers could not be directed with certainty, and oncers are less inclined to take anyway.  In addition, when we did get a fish up more than once, they were always, but always heading away from the boat.  That meant trying for long range covers: not easy in a glass calm, and there always seemed to be a wee air coming in your face no matter which way you were casting -- so leader turnover was pretty naff a lot of the time.  However, there was still enough times when you could be fairly sure you had shown your fly to the fish, and the fish had ignored it.  However, there were also some tell-tale 'crinkles-under' to show you the fish had indeed seen your fly and had invited you to poke it where the sun don't shine.

Adam Marr reaches for the net, as Stewart Barnes plays a good fish -- but moments later it was off!

After a couple of hours with only 2 fish on for a few seconds each to show for our efforts, Ian Macdonald and I decided to try going finer and smaller.  That worked -- well it maybe didn't so much work, as improve things a bit -- and we started to put a few fish in the boat.  We were both on 14 or 16 CDCs: Ian's a hare's ear, mine a candy-stripe.  We spooned the fish to see if there were any clues as to why they were so tricky.  Not really -- just been picking away at whatever they came across -- some scrotty buzzer pupes, bits of grass (as usual) the odd hoglouse, and the most common item was the shuck of the decent-sized buzzer that had been hatching.  It had quite a brownish tinge to it, so I put a size 14 fiery brown Shipman on the tail and that was worth two fish.

Ian Macdonald with a hard-worked-for blue

The 2 or 3 boats around us had been working hard as well, and they had been landing enough fish to draw attention from further afield.  It very quickly got very busy in behind Sam's point  Before long there was more than a dozen boats, the fish stopped rising, and we took our cue to look elsewhere.  We went across to see if the fish off the shoulder had settled down after being run over at 9:30.  We spotted Dougie and Adrian coming away from there so reckoned there wasn't much doing.  However, we were seeing fish just a bit further along and we went in for a look.  Same story as before -- tricky hardly describes it!  We worked away at them though, picking up another 2, before... they got even trickier!  Ian went to a single fly (we should probably have been fishing a single all along), but stepped back up to a size 12, a hare's ear comparadun.  That got instant interest, bringing several chances and our last fish of the day.

Dougie Skedd with turbo-charged friend

When we got in and compared notes it was clear the rest had struggled even worse than we had.  Only 2 rods had anything much to report.  Adrian Coats had 3 fish, including a 6 pounder, caught in Portend Bay to a floating line with a very slow-fished goldhead stickfly.  Tommy Steven, meanwhile, went downstairs with intermediate, then Hi-D, catching 1 each to a peach booby, a yellow booby, and an orange mini-lure.

The club's 16 rods caught 22 fish.

Photos: Canon 10D with...

Image 1) 17-40mm and images 2-5) 70-300mm IS lenses