Sunday, 24th August

Coldingham Loch, Day Session

The first thing that struck us about the water was its colour.  After the oxtail soup on Glencorse, last outing, we had pea soup on this outing.  Obviously an algal bloom - a rarity on a water that is usually gin-clear.  To make matters worse, after seemingly endless overcast and wet days, we would have to get a day of rarely broken sunshine, wouldn't we?  Worse still, the wind was swirly and blustery.  A real pity for those of us looking to get a day on dry fly (such a reliable method on Coldingham), because, although it will often put up with sun if the wind is OK, and put up with wind if it is overcast, it would not accept sun and wind together on the day.  And that was a shame, because there was the best fall of terrestrials we had seen all year.  Mainly black gnats, but all manner of assorted scrots was mixed in with them.  Any time a wee cloud caught the sun for half a minute, the fish were up and popping away.  However, before you even had a chance to pick up the other rod, the sun would be back out and the fish just vanished.  Maybe the bloom was restricting visibility such that they had to be right high in the water to see the insects, and that was too high when the sun was out?  Who knows?

Dougie Goddard 'taches a lively one

Nevertheless, there was a brief chance with dries right at the start of the day, and John Wastle and I both went with them at the off.  I had barely got the leader degreased when John pointed out a fish had risen right behind me.  A quick dropped backcast, and it took my Adams Klinkhammer like a wee sweetie.  A good start, and after that we both had several offers from covered rises, but neither of us made contact.  After a while the sun and wind came to dominate proceedings, and so it was a case of finding other means to dig out a fish or two.

What looks like digital noise in the foreground is actually algae

We pottered about with various nymphing rigs at anchor... floating line vs glass line, weight on tail vs no weight on tail vs tail bouyed up with a suspender, swinging vs straight down the wind and figure-of-eighted back, and so on.  A steady trickle of fish came in on these tactics, with most success coming to floating line with a black snatcher on the dropper and a hare's ear suspender on the tail, swung & slow F-of-8ed.

Stewart Barnes lays out a line, while Eric Singer searches for inspiration

Mid-afternoon came and the takes dried up.  Down in front of us, we could see John Miller and John Levy, anchored out from the summer house.  They were picking up from a slow start and got themselves into a fantastic rhythm.  Fish after fish came were now coming to their boat.  The word was passed out - floating line and a black and green tadpole.  Well, we pissed about with that sort of thing and it did us no good at all.

One of John's rainbows, showing it had a narrow squeak at the 'hands' of a cormorant

What else could we try?  How about a washing line?  Why not?  I put up the slow glass, with a pair of mini boobies in black & sweetcorn and damsel, ostensibly to fish the black snatcher in between them.  Chucked that out and very slow F-of-8ed it back...  and it worked a treat.  All right, so every fish that took, took one of the boobies.  Any port in a storm, after all!

The 2 John's ended up best boat by a good margin.  In addition to their black and green tadpoles, they had fish to Diawl Bach, green-ribbed Diawl Bach, and black buzzer

Bob Whyte with a late customer

Of the remaining anglers, no less than 8 recorded a score of either 3, 4 or 5 fish - very good consistency in really quite adverse conditions.  Ed Green and Euan Cluness recorded 7 between them.  Ed deserves praise for being the the one person to stick with dries all day, taking his fish to a size 12 black Klinkhammer.  Euan mixed it up between a silver sedge and a cat's whiskers.  Trevor Gibson and Callum Macdonald split a 6 fish bag to Diawl Bachs, F-of-8ed on the floater.  Tommy Steven was another to score with nymphs, F-of-8ed on the floater.  Stewart Barnes' fish came to damsel and Diawl Bachs, again on the floater, with a slow or very slow retrieve.  Last, but by no means least, Bob Whyte had a bag to damsel, cruncher and pheasant tail - yet again on floating line and F-of-8 retrieve.

The Club's 13 rods landed a very respectable 56 fish.

Photos: Canon 40D with (images 1, 3 and 4) 24-105 mm IS and (images 2, 5 and 6) 70-200 mm f4 IS lenses