A frustrating day, because it looked at the start it was going to be a good one, despite the awful conditions… but it delivered very little after the first period. I don’t think anyone on the loch caught a fish after the first couple of hours. At least out club caught a few early on. The few others that were out seemed to be blank!
Although we arrived to a local fog, it had burned off by the time we went out, and after that it was sun, sun, sun for the day. And of course, the inevitable fresh easterly gradually built up and up as the day continued. At least it was warm this time.
As we were tackling up, I could see fish rising out from the west end – a good number of them. I put up a pair of dries – a chocolate hog in case of alders, and a pale ginger hog, as I was seeing a pale sedge in the car park. However, once out on the water, I was seeing quite a few Caenis spinners. By now we were seeing fish rising all around us. Almost the first one I covered took the choco hog beautifully. It then proceeded to run 50 yards of line and backing off me! It was in danger of fouling on Stewart and Davy’s boat, out to our left. I managed to get it back and into the net. Nothing huge, either.
Shortly after that, Peter in the boat with me also caught one on a hog. We were thinking this was going to be great! But from that point on, the fish were ignoring us. With so many fish rising, I was putting money on the Caenis spinners being involved, and so changed my dries to more Caenis-orientated stuff. That made no difference. Closer inspection showed a lot of what was probably vegetable matter – seeds, sepals, husks, whatever. Maybe they were taking that? I also saw what I reckon was a tiny beige insect – way too small to imitate – and that might have been what they were on.
During this time, we saw Davy catch the first of 2 fish and Mel in the other boat (only 3 club boats out) get one as well. We were now doing so little with the dries that Peter changed over to a washing line set-up, on an intermediate. that proved a good move, as he caught 2 fish on it – one to a Muskins and one to a sunburst FAB. By this time the fish rises were diminishing but the breeze was rising. The more time wore on, the more the surface was cleared of fish food and the rises dried up completely. We tried moving around, and we tried a variety of methods and flies, all with zero response from the fish. I even tried a black snake on a DI-2… just to see. That did get a good pull from a fish, but it didn’t stick. (I think this hook at the back-end thing is a confidence trick??? I can’t hook fish on snakes!!!)
By mid-afternoon we were going through the motions and decided to take an early bath… as did everyone else.
The club’s 6 rods caught 8 fish.