A nice, benign day, weather-wise, with light and variable winds and sunny intervals, with broken cloud. Frandy isn’t the best water for light and variable, as it is often coming from different directions at different parts and is often messing-up intended drifts.
Steve Kilpatrick and I quickly got the vibe that there was little doing, apart from a few wild brownies around the 9-inch mark. Over the course of the day we settled on fishing dries for whatever we could get on them. This turned out to be a selection of wee wild browns and a couple of larger stockie browns. It didn’t help that, like in so many places these days, there was very little fly life. Just a few sedges. The only rainbow we encountered was hooked on a foam daddy, but fell off, short of the net. It would have doubled the club’s tally of rainbows, to 2, if it had been landed! Turns out that the intended stockings of rainbows had not happened for various reasons. A stocking of browns had been put in, in their place. Some warning of this might have been good. Anyroad, success with the brownies was had with a Grunter!
Reports from other boats…
Keith Logan and Bob Whyte…
Bob and I immediately headed towards the dam wall. From a distance, there looked to be a few fish moving, close-in. Bob started on dries, while for some strange reason (may have been the sun and flat calm) I went with a mid-glass, FAB and hoppers. Most of the fish we saw moving were small browns and a few showed fleeting interest in Bob’s dries, but opportunities were still few and far between. With little success, we stuck to our guns and hoped we could find a few fish and a tactic. We headed to the top of the dog-leg, where a few boats were working close-in to the shallows. The wind was swirling and we could not find a decent drift – definitely a day for digging-in and hoping for the odd daft trout. One good brown trout (a recent stocking) duly obliged to a small red-ribbed Diawl Bach. After what felt like an eternity, Bob caught another splendid brown trout that came to a snake on a Di-7. I switched to dries and landed another good brown to a daddy. This was interspersed with a few smaller fish. Thereafter, we went through long fallow periods, with moments of dry fly incompetence (mostly me). Glorious venue for a nice walk in the hills and a good picnic but rock hard fishing. KL
Stewart Barnes and Allan Everington…
A hard day, and very disappointing to hear that Allan and I were not the only ones to struggle. Like a few boats, we tried the dam to start, where some fish were moving, probably brownies, but they were not interested. We then moved to the top end and tried a number of places down the far bank. Allan gave us hope with a nice rainbow and I had a wrench from what I thought was one. We each had a couple of small browns. We then tried the home shore, a bit in the middle, the dam again, home shore again, but again just a couple of browns. Probably we each had one brown that would have counted. SB
John Gibson and Gary Heseltine…
Gary and I struggled with the wind direction all day. I had one follow to the boat, one rise when I wasn’t looking, and one brownie. That took a bushy green Peter. We stayed in the main part of the water and tried to fish the margins. Gary had one nice fish on that escaped and a brownie that likewise made a successful bid for freedom. Both were on yellow owls. I was on the point of chucking all my flies in, one by one, to see if any clues were to be had. JG
