Woke up to heavy rain and this continued until I arrived at the reservoir at 07:30. It eased up, and by 09:00 we had cloud cover and a fairly light breeze as we set out to fish.
Bill Taylor had advised us that it had fished its socks off on Saturday – an ominous statement! Thoughts of will the fish have their tin hats on today and this proved to be the case. I was fishing with prospective new member Jimmy Anderson as we headed up to the bend to fish down the roadside, towards the island. Jimmy managed to pick a fish up on a Diawl Bach fairly quickly and we thought that was the start of a good day. Wrong – two o’clock found us at the dam with no further fish in the boat. In fact, not even a pull! We had seen a few boats pick up an odd fish but not in any quantity.
At the dam there were a few boats with fishers from the West! We could hear their accents as they confirmed audibly that they were catching on a “wotsit” fished under a bung. We then watched them confirm this fact visually. The only “wotsit” that I knew of was in the packet in my lunch bag but Jimmy confirmed that he had seen this pattern before. Created from a cleaning mitt!!
We of course didn’t have the appropriate wotsits but did have, after a hunt through my bag, a small bung to which I attached a wriggly worm (Derek Kilgour style)… and, lo-and-behold, managed to catch 4 very nice sized fish. Jimmy had another fish on the same pattern. The rest of the boats caught on various flies, with the most successful being Derek Kilgour managing 6 using a midge-tip/DI-7 with boobies and Howwood, and Dougie Skedd with 8 on his trusty HI-D and Minkie. No opportunity for dries today!!
Next best boat was Tommy Steven with 7, using a 3’ sink-tip and Viva, and Peter Fionda with 2 using an intermediate and mini lures.
The rest of the boats-
John & Callum Robertson – 3 Fish
Ramsay Zenati & Trevor Gibson – 6 Fish
Alan Brown & Gary Heseltine – 5 Fish
Stewart Barnes & John Gibson – 2 Fish
A total of 45 fish were landed for 7 Boats.
