Glencorse Reservoir, day session

Most folk concentrated on fishing dries, and there was an early flurry of action in the crook of the elbow, with John Levy, Dougie Skedd and Deputy Dawg all taking fish.  Alec Ramsay and I dropped in behind them, and instantly a fish woofed my heather fly, only to come adrift a couple of seconds later.  All looking good, though.

However, it was all a bit of a false dawn and the morning as a whole was slow going.  So slow in fact, that we played around with sunk lines for a while.  That was just as slow, though Alec had a snap-off from a smash take.  We went back to dries.  I put up a team of 3 half-hogs so I could figure-of-eight them without twisting up the cast.  That got us off the mark, with a couple sticking to the claret on the tail and another couple coming adrift. 

We concentrated on dries after that, and covered most of the water in our search.  It took until mid-afternoon for us to get any kind of rhythm going, when we finally got into fish along the avenue of trees on the road shore.  A switch back to static presentation improved matters considerably, though for me, they continued to pick out the claret half hog on the tail, while Alec had to abandon his cast of flouro and tie one up with Tectan to get the offers flowing.

We were at least starting to see a few risers now, though they were very oncey and only late in the day did we have any success with covering rises.  The takes were very subtle - just sipping the fly down.  One memorable one came under the shade of the trees, when I didn't see the rise at all - just the flash of the fish's flank as it turned away with the fly.  Over the piece we should have landed double what we did - too many on and then off again.

Stewart Barnes and Ian Macdonald had 4 apiece to dries, with Ian fishing a daddy-long-legs and Stewart on heather fly and claret hopper.  They caught their fish everywhere we didn't - the top end and off the high bank of the south shore.

John Levy and guest D Bertram had 9 to their boat, fishing the main basin with dries, though I'm not sure about John's pattern... it just says 'Secret' on the card!

Top boat was Dougie Skedd and Trevor Gibson with 13, taken on dries, with Dougie's hare's ear Klinkhammer and orange hopper, both size 10s, their top patterns.

Lake of Menteith,

afternoon session

Sunday, 15th August

Sun, sun, sun.  A contender for hottest, calmest day of the year to date.  I am wary of reporting that the fishing was very hard going, as we heard reports of good catches from the boats that packed in to Gateside bay.  If that is the case, fair play to them.  However, we did a head count from across at the heronry, mid-afternoon, and we counted over 20 boats in Gateside.  My boat partner, Jimmy Millar and I and, as it turned out, the rest of our club, were of one mind in avoiding getting involved in that sort of thing.  Maybe the warm weather had driven the bulk of the fish into the deep water of Gateside?

Jimmy and I set out our stall to have a day on dries.  We were hoping to see heather flies and shield-bugs - 2 favourites of the Lake fish in the late summer/autumn period.  We didn't see a heather fly the whole day, though Jimmy's first fish fell to a heather fly imitation.  We did see plenty shield bugs (photo of an ex-shield-bug bottom right).  John Levy caught 2 fish on Dougie Skedd's shield bug imitation, which I reckon was modelled on a pubic louse.  Sorry - I neglected to get a hold of it for a photo - will try to add, if just for the craic.

As the day wore on, we tried here and there - the butts, Tod Hole, and across to Kate's brae.  At Kate's we had a good chance of a fish or two - there was a fair bit of surface activity.  However, all we managed were a few fresh air shots.  It seemed like the problem was due to the sticky surface film - neither of us could get our leader to cut through the surface for more than one or two casts.

We moved on, via International Bay, Inchmahome and the heronry, to the plantation.  We found a few fish up there and, by sheer hard graft, we got a hold of a couple - after drifting way out over open water.  They were still looking for shield-bugs: a fiery brown hopper was their choice.  Just as it looked like it couldn't get any harder, they went off!  We came back down the water.  By now there was a light westerly established, and it was creating some nice slicky water in the lee of Inchmahome.  We finished there, and Jimmy took one last cast.

We reckoned if we could have turned back the clock to the start, and we took a look at how little was showing, we might have decided that dries was plan B, and let's start with... but what?  Well, looking through the score cards...

Stewart Barnes and Gary Wright landed 5 between them on dries (CDC hoppers), fished on the road shore.  Dougie Goddard had a brace to dries, as did Hugh Thomson (and, as previously reported, so did his partner John Levy).  That left it to guest David Bertram to show us all up by landing 5 on nymphs, fished slow on an SSI, in hotel bay.

Coldingham Loch, day session

Eric Singer and I started out on dries until we got a feel for what was happening.  The early answer was that dries were a decent bet, and we landed several fish in the first hour or so, with a few more jagged.  It was a case of drifting the main bowl, taking in the north shore and Swing-gate Bay.  Though there was no evidence of heather flies about (or anything much in the way of meat on the water), we were getting them on  pearly-winged heather flies.

After an hour or so, the sun was high, the activity diminished, and a couple of blank drifts had us thinking again.  The wind was particularly annoying about this time, so we took an anchorage in the shelter of the home bay and had a go with nymphing tactics.  That was good enough to add 3 more to our total, plus a few missed chances, mostly to a mini black tadpole.  About that time we could see Jamie Tocher getting into a super spell on the east shore - it seemed his rod was bent every time we looked over.

Our nymphy action eventually went quiet, but by now we were seeing the odd rise again.  We were seeing black gnats on the water, and reckoned that was the source of the fishes' attention.  We upped sticks, went back on the dries and tucked in behind the cages, where we were seeing the majority of the rises.  That gave us a frantic spell, when we were throwing at fish every cast.  We didn't bother to change flies - the gnats were 16s, while we were on 12s.  They didn't seem too bothered.  The only thing that mattered was to get the leader sunk.

All too quickly that spell finished, as the supply of gnats ran out.  We went for the grand tour, and took in the west arm - not a huge amount happening there.  As we worked our way back down to the main bowl, the weather changed, and suddenly we had perfect conditions.  But where were the fish???  Give them a minute though, and sure enough there they were.  Loads of them...  So, now we had fish rising, but whereas the earlier fish had been easy targets, these guys were altogether much more tricky.  A look at the surface of the water showed some decent sized flies of a buffy colour, plus sedges.  Nothing too tricky, you would think.  I changed away from blacks to a hare's ear Klink and an Adams hopper.  Not the answer.

Too late.  The ref blew his whistle and we were off.  I would have loved to have had another hour to try to work out what those guys were on. Oh well...

Jamie Tocher and Trevor Gibson boated 11 to figure-of-eighted nymphs on floating line, with Jamie's sparse pheasant tail nymph their stand-out pattern.  Bob Whyte and guest David Bertram had 10 to a mix of dries and nymphs, while Ed Green and Tommy Steven had 9 to dry heather flies up the top end.