Dougie Skedd reports…
After a couple of cancellations for strong winds it was good to be getting out to fish at Frandy. Given the way the weather has been it should have been no surprise to get up on Saturday morning to find a windless day with dense fog. The murk was particularly bad, crossing the Forth, but improved a bit further inland. By the time I got to Frandy it wasn’t too misty, but it was windless and the midges were out.
Flat calm but with nothing rising. Again? Oh well, off we went. I was paired with Davie Syme and we had no idea where or how to begin. I detest trying to pull in windless conditions, and I don’t like the idea of nymphing in slightly barren upland conditions, so dries aimed at terrestrials were my start point. Davie tried a damsel. We couldn’t buy a take at our first stop-off point, at the dam.
We moved over to the outlet and a slight breeze got up at the same time. We drifted very slowly along the bank. A fish rose. I got a good cover on it and it quietly sipped down the foam beetle on the point. The scoreboard began to tick over. A bit further down the bank, as I looked at the scenery, a fish ate the sedgehog on the dropper. Fortunately Davie spotted it and cried out. I lifted and it was on. We kept going, albeit slowly, down the bank. Another couple of fish ate the beetle. We seemed to run out of fish, so we went back to the top of the bank near to the dam. More fish came on board to the beetle. Davie was fishing with foam beetles too. Fish were coming up and looking at his flies but turning away. I suggested he try changing away from a fluorocarbon leader, which was quite flashy, to a matt-surfaced nylon one. Now Davie was catching fish too. We finished up in bright sunshine on a flat calm loch with sixteen fish to the boat. All the other members had fish too, so a very pleasant and enjoyable day for everyone.
DS
