Saturday, 20th October

Linlithgow Loch, Day Session

The day got off to a lively start, with your correspondent taking a dip in the harbour on his way into the boat.  All I can say is, watch out for boat 4 - it's got a vicious streak!  My thanks go to Boyd Scott and the duty bailiff for pulling me out.  Ivor and Len were on hand to give me 5.6 and 5.7 respectively, having docked a point for over-rotation on entry.

It could have been a lot worse -- the only bits of me that stayed dry were the 2 pockets holding my car keys & USB drive, and my mobile phone.  Although my seat box shipped a fair bit, the camera escaped, and although my landing net sank, it left just enough of the frame visible to get a grappling anchor into it and retrieve it from the depths.  Someone asked later, "Were you wearing your lifejacket?", to which I replied, "Thankfully, no!"  -- I had thus saved myself the 20 quid it costs to recharge the damned thing.

I'll not do that again in a hurry, though.

Boyd Scott lands his 4th of the morning.

As I forgot to bring a towel or a change of clothes, and as it was far from tropical enough to dry-off in the boat, my early morning swim  meant a drive home to get sorted out.  Having eschewed the 9 a.m. start that the others made, I returned, nice and dry, at 11-ish, and got out onto the water with guest Jim Walker (what must he have thought of this lot!).  I hadn't even put up a rod, when I was called into action to get a photo of Boyd Scott, who was into a fish just behind us in Town Bay.  Having got that dealt with, I got a rod put up, but again stopped short of actually fishing, while I took a shot of Trevor into a fish.  Boyd took another one, his 4th of the morning before I got a fly in the water.  Finally, I wet a line about 11.30 a.m.  And that's exactly the time the fish switched off for the day.  Doh!

Trevor gets taken behind

Trevor did manage one fish late on, to a booby and sinker, their earlier fish having come to brown buzzers fished on the point, deep, just on the edge of the drop-off.

Ian and Gavin Macdonald had 5 between them in that first couple of hours spell, and missed quite a few more, before the fish shut up shop.  They fished a bit further over towards the north west point, both on hares ears and Diawl Bachs, but with Ian on floater and Gavin on slime line.

John Miller sees the funny side of getting tangled up with John Levy's fish

John Levy was the only person to get a couple of fish after the 11.30 cut-off, taking 2 of his bag of 3 in the late morning/early afternoon period.  Again, it was a case of fishing nymphs, slow on a floater and long fluoro leader, and taking the fish deep on the tail fly.  John was on buzzers with a gold-head pearly thorax fly on the tail position.

The Club's 10 rods landed 15 fish.

Photos: Canon 10D with: image 1 = 17-40 mm; images 2-4 = 28-135 mm IS lenses