This outing was scheduled for Saturday 6th, however Saturday 6th was, like many days this year, a write-off due to gales. It must take a bit to make Coldingham dangerous, but Gareth reported there were huge waves crashing on the north shore, so it’s as well we were able to reschedule for the following evening. With one thing and another, it was a small outing, of just 3 boats.
The wind had reduced quite a bit, though it was still blowy for the early part of the evening. The forecast promised it would drop away for the second half, and hoorah! – they were right.
Derek Kilgour and I started at anchor, figure-of-eighting nymphy stuff… well I say nymphy stuff – Derek’s was more nymphy than mine – he on buzzers, me with a goldhead damsel on the tail. It was a case of early success to the damsel though. We had to refresh our anchorage a few times to keep the fish coming, and after a while Derek’s buzzers started to have succes as the fish came up higher in the water. I tried a washing line set-up, putting a small damsel booby on the tail to keep up a couple of buzzers. I hooked a fish first cast, but a fat brownie hit the booby while playing it, and the dropper was ripped-off, leaving me with the brownie.
By now we were seeing fish rise and the wind was definitely dropping back. There were a few scrotty buzzers hatching. We set up with dries to go on the drift. I put up a black Klink and an Adams hopper, but before I’d even had a cast, I spotted what the fish were getting going on: Caenis! I stayed with the initial set-up and had a cracking resident to the hopper and a couple of fresh-air shots to the Klink. Derek had started on a CDC loop-wing and he also had an early fish to it before changing to a sparkle-gnat. The change worked and Derek was quickly into a fish. I changed to a sparkle gnat and grey Shipmans, which was worth one fish to the Shippy and a few more fresh-air shots. Derek landed a couple more to the sparkle gnat before all too quickly we reached the stated finish time of 9:50 p.m.
Ed Green did well with a size 14 yellow owl shuttlecock, taking 6 fish. Stewart Barnes also caught to the same fly. Trevor Gibson and Gary Heseltine caught 8 between them on buzzers. The 6 rods landed 29 fish.