I was delighted to be fishing with John Miller, one of the club’s elder statesmen and still enthusiastically joining in on our outings. Darrel had been speaking to a couple of his fishing chums during the week and reports were that Glencorse has been ”fishing its nuts off”, which is generally the kiss of death for any day’s fishing… along the same lines as “you should have been here yesterday”. However, we were not to be deterred. It seems that Glencorse is becoming a very popular destination and all the boats were booked for the day. We had a good turnout, with 7 boats. The weather was bright, but it was still a bit raw. However, the temperature was expected to pick up during the day.
There was an early flurry of small buzzers emerging as we headed out and quite a few fish were showing in front of the boats: quite a few smaller wild brown trout and a few stockies. John had a preference for midge-tip and washing line, with a couple of nymphs. During the day he chopped and changed and even tried a few small traditional patterns, including that old favourite the Kingfisher Butcher. I started with the intermediate, a couple of nemesises (black/olive) and a gold vicar buzzer. I fully expected to come up in the water as the day temperature picked up. Dougie Skedd and Stewart Barnes started fishing close-by, in front of the fishing hut, and Dougie was soon into a fish. He was fishing a Di-5 with a couple of boobies. We started slowly and as is normal the wind swirled and at times it was flat calm. There were loads of small dark buzzers emerging. Kenny at the fishery mentioned that buzzers were an increasing feature on the reservoir in recent years.
I struggled to find a method and chopped and changed, quite a bit. I switched to straight-lining buzzers, firstly on a hover midge-tip line and then full floater. I managed to pick up a few small browns, but never encountered any of the rainbows. John had a bit of activity to a small cat booby but again nothing would stick. A lot of boats were congregating round the burnmouth and along the tree line by the road shore, and there were actually quite a few prospecting in the open water. Many were repeating the drifts. It was going to be a case of joining the armada and hopefully coming across a few fish. We spoke to Mel and Bob, who had returned to base to pick up a net, something that was definitely required for the quality of Glencorse trout. They had mentioned that they had encountered some good fish right at the top end bay, which we thought might be worth a look at some stage. However, John and I took our time fishing the opposite shore along the hill line. There were occasional pods of fish in the open water but they tricky.
Having really struggled, we decided to head up to the top end. We passed by John McGonagle and Matt Wolstenholme coming back down. They had picked up fish but said that it had turned off. We had nothing to lose, anyway. I had changed yet again but set-up the Di-3 sweep with a black booby on the point and a couple of cormorants. John settled down to enjoy his lunch while I continued to fish, keeping my flies fishing close in to the shore line down both sides. It was only then that our fortunes changed and we had a rich vein of activity. Most fish came to the cormorants, but the booby was integral to keeping the flies in the right zone: drifting towards the culvert on the road shore. We managed quite a few quality fish to the boat and had the area to ourselves for a couple of hours before a few more boats arrived. Colin and Innes fell in behind us on our drift while Davy Syme and Darrel Young worked the middle drift and far shore.
We then headed back towards the open water. We both loaded up with dries and, although we raised a few, nothing stuck. Although fish were showing they had not fully turned onto the dry fly. Most likely they were taking emerging buzzers just sub-surface. Any wind and the risers disappeared. John and I ended up with 15 fish to the boat and our 14 rods accounted for 46 fish.