Sunday, 25th May
Carron Valley Reservoir, Day Session
Will this run of easterlies ever end? Not by Sunday, 25th May, alas. And to make matters worse, it blew up to a hooly in the afternoon. To make it worse yet, we had bright sunshine most of the day. Could anything make it worse? Well, the conditions were pretty decent for the first hour... but we went out with a duff outboard and wasted the best of it, limping back to harbour and changing boats. (Stewart Barnes and Dougie Skedd lost 2 hours in the afternoon when they suffered similar mechanical problems while up at the far dam!)
A lively rainbow for boat 19
Tommy Steven and I had intended to head up to Carron bay, but after our outboard problems we thought we had better not waste any more of the good conditions, so went to plan B and worked our way up the bays on the south shore. We were pulling trads on WetCel II and DI3 respectively, but by the time we arrived up at Carron Bay, we had had little to show for our efforts, apart from a succession of undersized brownies (mostly to a claret bumble muddler), and just one that made the measure.
A well-proportioned rainbow for Tommy
The area on the south shore beyond Carron Bay had been holding rainbows (in addition to plenty browns) when we were here at the end of April. It turned out that there were still rainbows in the area, as the 3 or 4 boats fishing up that far all picked up a few. But there was no sign of any decent browns. To get a rainbow or two, Tommy and I both had to go a bit deeper. Tommy went onto a Hi-D, while I lazily stuck a goldhead black tadpole on the tail. The taddy picked up just as many wee brownies as the trads had been doing! Tommy's fish also came to a black tadpole, and a mini-Viva.
JSB nets one on the far dam for Dougie Skedd
As the wind picked up, we went in search of quieter water, and had a go both sides of gull island. There were fish in the area, and we both had chances, and a further rainbow each. With only 4 club boats out, it won't take long to go round the others... Dougie Skedd and Stewart Barnes spent most of the day up the far end. They had 4 rainbows and 2, yes 2, takeable browns., mostly by going deep with DI-7. Successful flies included clan chief, shug, viva and black booby.
Who ate all the pies?
Bob Whyte and Innes Zenati fished the eastern end of the south shore. They caught rainbows on cat's whiskers - and didn't need to go any deeper than an intermediate, either. That left the Gibson brothers, John and Trevor. They spent the day at the head of the wind, tucked-up at the dam wall, and did OK, taking half a dozen rainbows, mostly on DI-7 and boobies.
The club's 8 rods landed 24 fish.
Photos: Canon 40D with (images 2 and 3) 24-105 mm IS and (images 1*, 4 and 5) 70-200 mm f4 IS lenses
* IS a godsend for capturing that sort of shot from a similarly rocking boat at 200 mm. At ISO 100, too!
