Having seen the forecast for snow and gales, we were all hoping we would get a call from Mel to tell us the outing had been cancelled. No such luck! The drive out was in pouring rain that was threatening to turn to snow, as the temperature got down to 2.5 C.
Everyone assembled in the hut and put on every stitch of clothing we could muster. I had 2 thermal vests, a thick fleece shirt, 2 more fleeces, a heavy jumper, a softshell jacket, scarf, my waistcoat and my waterporoof jacket. Three pairs of thick socks and wellies, Simms winter troosers and waterproof overtrousers. And fingerless neoprene gloves. I was OK. Wouldn’t say warm, but I was comfortable. Couldn’t move very easily, though!
At least it was relatively quiet, as I don’t think any of the members entertained the idea of going out.
At the start, the wind was OK. Mel and I set off on a long drift down the railway shore. We were both on DI-3 with a mix of pulling stuff. The Coulam was crabbing in to shore, even with the drogue out. But it gave us a zig-zag course, so we were covering the water. Before long, I took the first of the day, on an orange blob on the bob. The wind was now starting to get up. We went a long way down without another touch and there didn’t seem to be any point to continuing in rougher and rougher conditions.
We came back up and tried the south shore. The problem there was that every time I took the boat in to the shore, about half a dozen casts later we were away out in the middle in the big waves. We could see there was quiet water at the head of the wind, which was also benefitting from shelter from the copse on the west shore. The other boats were now gravitating to the same area, so quite a bit of shuffling about was required.
At this point we didn’t know if we were wasting our time, or what. However, I caught a fish quite quickly – orange blob again. That renewed enthusiasm. Then Mel scored with a coral tadpole. Then it went a bit quiet. The wind was now fierce and we were thinking let’s give this until lunch time and go for an early bath. I think by now the first of the other boats had called it a day. We were having lunch when I started to see other boats catching. Dougie Skedd had a fish, then Jimmy Anderson had one, then Dougie another. Seemed to be a bit of a move on. We decided to suspend the early bathing for now and see what else we could do.
We carried on and, sure enough, we added 2 more each. We found we were getting them with the old ‘FTA’ retrieve, plus giving the flies a good long lift and hang… keep hanging… keep hanging…… We failed to connect with several that were so late in taking, there was nothing left with which to try and tighten into them!
Another quiet spell followed. Mel decided to go proper deep and went onto a DI-7. That did the trick as he picked up the next 3. I was reluctant to go that deep, as I had lost an entire team of 3 when I pulled into a sunken tree or something, just fishing the DI-3. So, I switched to the DI-5 and put a tequila FAB on the tail to hold it up a wee bit. I think by now we were both on all orange or peach or pink. I thought the water clarity was quite poor – maybe the orange was standing out at depth? Anyway, the switch to DI-5 and FAB did the trick and I was back in action. We continued to get sport right through to the end of the session, by which time there were only 3 boats still out.
We finished with 15 to the boat. An enjoyable day was had, where none had been expected!
The Club’s 13 rods landed 51 fish.
