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.
