After 40 days and 40 nights (give or take) of no rain… we had rain! Huzzah. It didn’t make the drive along the M8 much fun, but we got there. Had to blow the cobwebs off the waterproof jacket and overtrousers. Even more rare – the breeze was off the south-west!!! A bit stiffer than we would have liked it, but hey-ho. It was a bit quieter than it usually is, which made a pleasant change, as really there are too many boats for a water of 100 acres.
I was fishing with Steve Kilpatrick. The conditions were not up to much for any kind of delicate nymphing. My attempts with various pulling stuff on previous Harelaw outings has not generally found favour with the fish. Add in that I am forever hearing about how good Harelaw is for dry fly. So, although not ideal for dries, I decided just to fish them all day and see what I could do. I started off with a size 12 sooty olive paraloop hopper on the point, and a chocolate hog on the dropper (partly as a sighter for me in the good chop). Steve started with a midge-tip approach.
We started with a drift from the point at Board Walk over to the islands. It wasn’t long before I had a nice take to the hopper and the first of the day came aboard. One other fresh-air shot came on the drift. I don’t think we saw any other rises, though. Steve bumped a fish that didn’t stick and had one other follow. It was getting rougher beyond the islands, so we came back up and tucked in to the sheltered water in the corner of the south shore. We soon became aware we were in amongst a whole load of rising fish. Steve switched to dries. The fish proved to be ultra-tircky. We could see they were on something just under the surface. They were always showing their dorsals and tails, without their mouths breaking the surface. My immediate thought was it might be phantoms, but it looked too leisurely – like a subsurface mop-up mode. They were ignoring our flies when we covered them. I tried a change to something hanging under a bit – a Klink and a top-hat. Useless. Tried another combo. Useless. Any time we did get a look, it ended in a fresh air shot. After we continued down into breezy water, we were out of them. Went back and repeated… and they were either done what they were doing or we had put them off by going through them. So, we carried on down and went round into The Tank. It was catching shelter in the arm, but it seemed to be devoid of life.
We spent the rest of the morning trying about for very little, other than the occasional fresh-air shot. However, after going back up to the head of the wind and doing drifts coming off The Point and going over to Green Bank, we started to get some action. We were seeing quite a few proper rises, too. I had gone back to my starting combo by now and I was getting good interest to both flies. We were seeing a few flies coming off – a small upwing fly and there were some bigger terrestrials on the water. Wee scrotters too. When you got across a rise you had a chance with it. But we had an incredible number of false takes and fresh-air shots. I was keeping my eyes on the hog as my sighter, and I would see a lovely slow, confident take as a fish rolled over it and went down with the fly. And I lifted… into nothing! In addition, we had biblical numbers of false takes and refusals. I guess it’s that old chestnut of the fish being twitchy from the sheer angling pressure – small water with many boats being fished every day – and having been caught several times already. However, we picked up a couple of fish in among all the fresh-air shots. Progress!
We tried back at the south shore corner. The fish were on the go again. This time they were a wee bit less tricky and we picked up a couple more. But then they went back into their subsurfacy activity and were really tricky again! So, back over to the Green Bank drift. Stevie picked up a fish on a foam daddy. I thought, well, let’s try the wee ethafoam beetle/terrestrial in place of the hopper on the tail. That was a good move and I picked up our final two on it before it was lousing time.
The Club’s 11 rods landed 41 fish.
Meanwhile, there was a bit of hilarity in Mel and Davie Syme’s boat when Mel’s lifejacket went off while he was fishing. I guess the damp got to the soluble trigger blocker. See photo from Davie.
