After the excitement of the opening outing to the Lake of Menteith last weekend it was disappointment all round as our second outing to Glencorse had to be cancelled due to high winds (20mph+ winds and 40mph gusts). Kenny Knox, the new fishery owner, was equally disappointed, as it was his first full day of the season. It certainly didn’t take long for our first cancellation of the season! The equivalent outing last season similarly met with very stormy weather but, unlike our decision this season to cancel, we went out in the storm and finished the day thinking perhaps we shouldn’t have. The weather was equally poor country-wide so choosing an alternative venue would not have made any difference. However, to try and raise spirits, and support Kenny in his new venture, we managed to make alternative arrangements for a midweek outing on Wednesday 1st April. Midweek, we only managed to get 3 boats out from the initial 8 weekend boats booked. On the day the westerly wind was still blowing hard, right down the reservoir, but it remained manageable. The temperature remained cold – around 10 C, but when the cloud cover broke into little patches of sun it felt quite good.
After setting up, Fraser Gault and I headed straight into the wind and took on the trip to the top of the reservoir. The chat around the boats was for Di 7 lines and lures. Fraser and I didn’t fancy that, so we decided on Di 3s and didn’t change for the rest of the day. Perhaps a mistake, once the catch returns were filed?
We drifted down the road shore towards the dog leg and had nothing to show for it. We then dropped into the roadside bay for some shelter and fished down past the bench towards the point where the burn enters the reservoir. Close into the burn Fraser started to get some interest but was failing to hold onto anything. We repeated the short drift from the dog leg back towards the burn entry point a few times. We found that only when we got close to the burn entry point did we start to get any interest. Fraser then finally managed to hold onto one and landed the first slab of a trout to a peach / salmon pink coloured blob with similarly coloured marabou tail.
At this point we were delighted to have been joined by a similarly pink coloured gentleman who had decided to show us his wares as he embarked on some nude wild water swimming! Faced with that, we decided to drift further along the road shore towards the causeway. This proved to be a good idea, as we both continued to get interest, particularly Fraser, who was getting fish to lunge at his fly on the hang. But again he was failing to hold onto them. I eventually got my first trout to a cormorant, working the road shore, and quickly followed it with a second. Both trout would easily be about 4lb, but neither put up much of a fight. Unfortunately, the wind was such that we were being pushed onto the shore rather than along it.
For lunch we retired to the shelter of the bay down by the Island and probably spent more time there than we should’ve. We tried along the causeway and had a further drift down the road shore. Fraser continued to get a lot of interest, but we both failed to land anything further. All of our interest was certainly close to the road shore.
The club had a total of 17 fish for the 3 boats, including 3 brownies. Matt and Keith both had a good day, each netting 6 fish. I believe a pink snake performed well on the day for Matt on a Di 7. The chat was perhaps correct for once. Kenny appreciated the club making the effort to turn out some midweek boats and help offset his losses at the weekend.
Keith Logan adds…
It has been a challenging start to the season so far for the club, the main issue once again has been the wind. We have endured a couple of tricky sessions, our 2nd outing of the year was to Glencorse on 28th March but this was cancelled due to wind with gusts forecast in excess of 30mph to arrive during the day. There was some more positive news in that our club secretary Mel Mitchell managed to arrange a mid-week outing on Wednesday 1st April.
Given the various work commitments we unfortunately had to reduce the number of occupied boats to 3. The conditions were actually reasonable but the wind was still an issue but much more benign than at the weekend. The fishery only opened the previous week when the surrounding hills apparently still had a covering of snow, the good news was the water clarity was excellent and maybe surprisingly there was some minnows working close to the boats. However, catch returns had been modest and not unexpectedly any success had been with high density lines, there was talk from anything from Di-3 right down to the Booby Basher. The shallow end which is often a good area at the beginning of the season was in effect unfishable with anything other than mini-tips due to the proliferation of weed.
I was paired with Davy Syme and we both headed out with Di-3 and Di-5 respectively and mini lures, it was going to be a pulling day for us. In fact we were not alone it was very much a case of dark lines al round, hardly surprising. With few boats out we had a lot of choice where to start but decided to focus on the road shore, the wind was steady but with the drogue deployed we had a good long initial drift toward the inlet.
We were encouraged to see Kenny the fishery manager and Dan Brown out fishing repeating drifts along the road shore. We did not see many rods bending and the temperature remained in the low single digits due to the wind chill factor for most of the day but despite the conditions there was some evidence of occasional small buzzer hatches, this did little to excite the trout nevertheless.
I hooked and landed the first fish to a black and green cormorant, the fish was in great condition but pretty lethargic and came to the net without much fuss – we put this down to the water temperature? Davy then picked up his first fish which turned out to be the best of the day and certainly in excess of 3lb, this fell to a beaded black/blus straggle fritz lure – the design was based on a Bob Whyte pattern and tied on a jig hook. It was pretty effective on a quiet day but fish were few and far between. We worked the same long drift for most of the day and managed to find a small pod of fish down towards the corner of the wall on the road shore. These fish gave a far better account of themselves.
It seems that a few dedicated wild swimmers continue right through the winter months on the reservoir and there were a few hardy souls in evidence along the road shore – it’s apparently a daily occurrence that is real hard core stuff.
Outstanding angler of the day award has to be given to Matt Wolstenholme who finished with an impressive 6 fish. Under the guidance of our own Dougie Skedd, Matt decided to give the Di-7 a go in the boat bay where he had gone in essence for some shelter, he tied on a pink ‘snooby’ and bingo, he found the fish and depth and just picked away at them in the afternoon.
The 17 fish for 6 rods was, under the circumstances, very creditable. The mid-week session is something that actually worked well and could be a good option in the future.
