Sunday, 28th September

Linlithgow Loch, Day Session

A decent day for it, if a tad bright at times.  Nice, light westerly though, and about average temp out on the water for late September.  The water was a bit coloured with algae, however, and I don't know if that was putting the fish off, but the fishing was very hard.  Some of the guys had been out over the previous few days and had struggled, and it was no different for us.

Eric Singer shows there is life in the old dog yet

Early on, there was an odd fish rising, and we wondered if a go with dries might be do-able, though the sun kept that idea pretty much on the back burner.  Interestingly, in addition to the odd good troot showing, there were quite a few rises from what were obviously much smaller fish.  We couldn't quite get a handle on whether they were roach or wild brownies.  Probably roach?

A boat makes its way round the palace bank

I was fishing with John Miller, and we both started with nymphing tactics, John slow figure-of-eighting his team, and me having a swing.  John's method was vastly the most productive, in that he was first broken by a violent take, and then landed a good fish to a size 10 skinny black buzzer, on the point, on fluoro.  And, er, that was it for our boat for the period 9.00 a.m. to 2.00 p.m.  I tried a good variety of changes, which there is no point in me listing, as they all proved equally fruitless - just accept I didn't sit there doing the same thing the whole time with it not working.

One safely in the net for John

We did see a couple of fish caught.  Eric Singer took one on a Diawl Bach/floater.  Trevor took one on a daddy-long-legs of all things.  How do you fish that with the bung, then?  Ian Macdonald, in with Trevor, took one pulling with a snatcher/floater.  John Levy, in with Eric, took one on a cruncher/floater.

Boyd Scott and Stewart Barnes, with historic backdrop

All this was in the west end/town bay region.  We started wondering what the boats that had ventured up the east end had been doing, and whether it was worth a look up there.  Firstly, Tommy Steven and Chris Bell arrived back from having spent a good chunk of the day in the east, followed by Stewart Barnes and Boyd Scott, and the story from both boats was that it was no better - one fish between four rods!

John Miller admires his hard-earned rainbow

Tommy and Chris settled in among the town bay boats and managed to pick up a fish apiece, Tommy to a green buzzer/floater, and Chris to a dry claret hopper, slow f-of-8ed.  Around this time, Eric picked up a second fish, to an orange blob (still on the floater).  Taking my cue from this I tried an orange booby on the end of my slow glass rig.  I tried counting it down in 12 feet or so of town bay.  I got to a count of 20 and... Hallelujah!  Two fish in ten minutes.  However, again, that was it.  John tried something similar and had a grip of a late fish, only for it to come adrift.

The club's 12 rods landed 12 fish.

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