A recurring issue this year has been the weather and this outing was no different. A beautiful red sky and sunrise greeted us on the way down the coast, but it didn’t fool me! High winds from the south-west and some rain were forecast and they were spot on, especially the wind.
We had 5 boats for this outing and immediately I could see that Derek and Keith had opted for drifting with dries. After a single fish to Derek, they reverted to a mix of drifting and anchoring, Derek on a floater and Keith on a midge-tip. They found fish in Swing-Gate Bay, but didn’t have enough time over them due to the wind and the inability of the anchor to hold. Eventually Derek had 2 and Keith 4 to Candy Booby and Diawl Bachs.
Stewart Barnes and Stephen Kilpatrick managed to anchor off the boathouse, and quickly Stewart had a fish, but that was to be the last of their action for the day.
Trevor and Matt anchored in front of the floating cage and endured a tough time, with only Trevor connecting with a fish of 4 1/2lb on a fab.
Colin and Ramsay had 2 and 1 respectively, with the fish coming to bead-headed damsels. In the afternoon Colin had several fish follow to the boat, but he just couldn’t connect with any.
I fished with Ed, who tried many variations of line and flies, without success. I managed in the morning to take 3 on a midge-tip, with the killing flies being a striped herl buzzer, flashback pheasant tail nymph and black How-wood. A change to a DI-3 brought another fish, also to the How-wood. Unfortunately, that was the end of the action, and we didn’t manage anything at all in the afternoon.
Most of us were finished by mid afternoon, due to increasingly high winds.
Overall: 15 fish for the 10 rods; not a great return!
