I arrived at the water to find a long queue of cars parked on the road outside. It seems the new management are not the early risers that Ken was… or as we are! Eventually they arrived and opened up the shop for us.
The weather has been, and continues to be, all over the shop – which now seems to be the case every year. After a one-day heatwave during the week, it was back to decidedly chilly, with a fresh northerly breeze (probably NNW, but difficult to tell). Anyone who knows Frandy knows it doesn’t do north as a wind direction, lying as it does, dog-legged and roughly east-west. If you fish the dam end, you get a westerly-ish drift onto the dam, with an annoying cross wind, which, being left-handed, was forever coming over my casting arm. And if you go up to the top end, you get the wind turned round 180 degrees and coming from the east… for 5 minutes… then west… for 5 minutes… then… not sure. Stick a finger in the air… If you try and fish the middle section you get whatever it decides to give you at any particular bit! And the strength was forever changing – quite blowy – then quite nice… for 5 minutes. We had plenty of cloud cover, though it was very welcome any time we got a short, sunny spell, as it put a brief bit of warmth in the otherwise cold air.
Bob Whyte and I set out to get a drift where we could. We headed over to the north shore and picked up the breeze going towards the dam. Bob went with a midge-tip line and a mix of flies covering the nymphy to lurey spectrum. I went for much the same sort of flies on a fast glass. I caught our first of the day – a typical stockie rainbow – on a small, lightly beaded damsel on the tail. Our drift took us on an angled track, out into the open water in front of the dam, and then into the SE corner, where the current low water level has left the ledge high and dry. We picked up another couple of fish on the way – Bob’s to a black Howwood (damsel variant).
We started to repeat the drift, putting out a drogue to try and keep us on a straighter track and give us longer on the approach to the dam, as there were clearly fish tight to the dam wall. With my first 3 fish all on the damsel, I tried a change to both droppers, putting an Orkneyfied WOIGO Kate McLaren muddler on the bob. That was a good move, as I picked up the next 2 on the WOIGO. Bob also put on a trad – a Clan Chief, and started catching fish on it. In addition, we were pulling up an amazing number of fish that were following the flies up, but not taking. Often you would only see an upwelling of water after the flies were already in the air for the next cast. Add in that we were bumping quite a few that were not sticking, and it was clear there were plenty fish in the area.
By the time we had run the drift several times and picked up 7 or 8 fish, we were getting itchy feet, wondering what was happening elsewhere. We also felt the fish were starting to put their tin helmets on a bit, so decided to take a look up the top end. When we got there, it was deserted, which told us a story. As we sat for a minute, it looked quite inviting. A light breeze was coming down from the Upper Glendevon end, a few buzzers were hatching and we were starting to see a few fish rising. I thought it was well worth a go with dries, so put the other rod up. By the time I was ready, the wind had turned 180 degrees, was blowing in from the main reservoir, and it put every fish down. Brilliant! Bob picked up another fish on the midge-tip before the boat started doing pirouettes. No wonder it was deserted. We headed back down to the dam.
Bob changed lines, to a DI-5, to go a good bit deeper. That was a good move, as he quickly got into the fish with it. I followed suit in switching to a DI-5. I also changed my dinky wee damsel for a big full fat one. That was also a good move, and I was soon picking up fish on it. We kept the scoreboard ticking over right to the finishing time, landing a total of 17 to the boat.
