Dougie Skedd reports…
Hmmm, another cool day of easterly airflow. Getting a bit sick of it by now. Still, moving on… Glencorse. A personal favourite of mine. I like its “natural” look and feel. It’s stocked with particularly good fish and they will usually respond to something during the day. Dougie Goddard and I set out to see what we could do. I saw some rises in the calm water behind the island that I judged to be small wild brownies. That turned out to be a mistake, but more of that later.
We set up for a drift down the roadside. Dougie opted for a sink tip and washing line tactics. I thought it might be worth a shot going deeper, so the Hi-D went on with a couple of boobies. I realised right away that the wind direction, coupled with the characteristics of the boat, made that a non-starter. The angles were all wrong and presentation was hopeless. I changed up to a slow intermediate and washing line rig. We fished on down the road shore to little effect. Then, nearing a known feature, the line tightened and our first fish came in. We kept going. Another fish in more open water, then one tight to the margin. Dougie hooked and lost one. We repeated the drift. Going past a tree on the bank, Dougie had a fish, then another, but then it went quiet for us.
We stooged about a bit, finally heading back upwind to the island. The day had now turned quite warm, and I was a bit irked to see the mistake I had made about the risers being displayed. There were risers everywhere. I switched to dries and caught three quite quickly on small shuttlecock dries buy then it went quiet there too. We had another drift with the washing line rigs and we both had a fish to them. A return upwind to see if the risers were in evidence again and, sure enough, there were a few. I fluked one more on a dry before it was time to go in. Nice to get some on dries again after all the pulling. Everyone had some fish and had enjoyed a good day. You can’t really ask for much more.
A photo from Mel Mitchell of a smiling John Miller…
Steve Kilpatrick adds…
Friday, the 5th of May, I find myself without a taxi to work with, so decided to phone Bill at Glencorse, and get an extra boat. I’m arriving at the reservoir. I found the usual suspects parked up already, including Trevor, who was packing his tent away after staying out all night to reserve prime place in the car park.
Boat allocations were carried out by Keith and loading of fishing gear commenced, along with the usual friendly banter to get the day off to a good start. I headed off fairly smartly to the roadside, where I encountered my first fish, which was quickly netted and returned. Second fish took me into the trees, whereby my top dropper got tangled in the trees, and I had to rescue the fish with hand and net, both on damsel type lures.
After drifting around the burn area for a while I decided to go back to the dam area where, after a frustrating 2 hours, I hooked another ‘bow on sticky covid bung, and a small 3/4 lb brownie on a dry. And I managed to get a 2 lb 8 oz brownie in the last half hour, on an olive damsel, in amongst the armada of boats west of the island. Joyful day!