After the lovely weather at the Watch on Tuesday, it was back to north easterly, cold and dreich… all day. Still, it wasn’t too bad from a fishing perspective. I fished with guest Ron Sharp again. We both set up 2 rods – one on dries and one to pull or have a twiddle. I took us up to the dog-leg to start, and I had an offer to the dries about second cast. Only a few casts later I caught a fish on a claret hog. Here we go, I thought. However, that turned out to be the way to make you fish dries for the next 3 hours without any further interest! We tried around a few areas. A drift onto the shoulder on the south shore saw Ron hook and lose one to dries. Then a drift down the road shore saw Ron hook and lose another to dries. By this time I had given up on dries and picked up the other rod. I had a try twiddling nymphs on a 12 ft tip with a wee booby on the tail. That did nothing. Then I tried pulling with a fast glass and a beaded damsel on the tail. That did nothing either, though by now I knew in my heart of hearts that I was falling into the usual trap of trying too late to play catch-up.
So, I went back to dries. We did a drift up into the top of the arm for a total of one missed offer. I was going to have another go at the bay at the dog-leg, but when we came back down it was like Piccadilly Circus in there, so we went on down to have a look at the dam end. It was free of boats – which told its own story. We gave it 10 minutes, but it was dead quiet. I came round to the high bank opposite the end of the island, which is often a good spot with dries. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before I was into a fish, followed soon after by another, both to a size 12 black hopper. I also landed a couple of good-sized wild brownies. Then I hooked a lump of a rainbow. I was trying to lever it into the net when it straightened out the hopper. Never mind, I thought – more to come. But no – that was yer lot! They put the shutters up on us again, and this time wur tea was oot!.
Jimmy Millar adds…
I was paired up with Bob Whyte today after again taking up Mel’s offer of a spare seat at Glencorse. We both agreed to start with twiddling tactics in the hope of getting a shot on the dries a bit later in the day, perhaps when the dreichness eased-off a bit.
The light breeze gave us a decent line down the road shore from about half way along. Straight away, I had a few gentle enquiries on the hang and on the drop on my setup of a damsel and two cormorants on the 15‘ ghost tip. Bob had set up a Di-2 with a booby and a couple of Diawls, but changed the booby to a damsel on seeing me get a bit of early interest. The booby was probably keeping his flies too high, because he was quickly into his first fish after putting on the goldhead damsel, followed by another soon after. That now seemed to be drawing more positive takes than I was. A quick change to a Wetcel 2 did pick me up two fish, but Bob was clearly doing better on his rig than I was, including one fish of approx 8 lb!
It must have been around midday that I decided to try the dries. We had seen little evidence of surface activity out in open water, but had noticed one or two tight in, below the overhanging branches along the road shore. They appeared to be taking stuff blowing out to them occasionally on the offshore breeze. It was clearly one of those situations where you needed to be the inside rod but, luckily for me, Bob didn’t seem to mind me being in that position. I think he was just as happy seeing them take my dries than his. Anyway, I chose a couple of simple size 12 black hoppers and was casting them as close to the branches as I dared, or even underneath them at times, letting them drift naturally back out on the breeze. This worked a treat and the fish would appear from nowhere to take the hoppers confidently.
The Club’s 14 rods landed 41 fish.
