Our first evening outing of the year – flaming June –it felt more like the end of October – We were exposed to a very blustery and cold east wind that blew the rain through the best of waterproofs. The word from our scout (Trevor had been on the water from eleven o’clock in the morning) was that lots of fish were in the shallow water at the west end of the loch. So every boat that was out that night was at the west end of the loch – Stewart Barnes and I were part of the pack – and we lashed the water with floaters and nymphs, wets, mini lures and anything else that would not get caught in the weed. After about an hour of this, we had only seen one fish being caught, we headed upwind to town bay. Again, we tried everything we could think of – I am sure we spent more time changing lines, flies and moving than we did fishing. We both practiced our casting for another two hours and it slowly dawned on me that my purple patch of the last month had deserted me. We up-anchored again and moved to the west side of the island. Now determined to catch a fish we changed lines again – me with a DI7 and Stewart with a DI3 – you will note that I make no mention of flies and no prize for guessing. To the surprise of both of us Stewart had a take and landed a rainbow, a nice fish of about two pounds, which was admired and returned to the water. We both thought we were in the hot spot, but no, we were not, so another move was called for – this time we moved to below the castle, and convinced I was not going to catch a fish, put on a floater and a size 10 daddy – my favourite way of not catching fish. We both fished away until after nine, doing nothing but being soaked and blown about. Hinting to each other that an early bath would be a good idea, I then had a big swirl at my flies and a sharp pull – Stewart quickly changed to a floater and dries – but that was it for us – no more rising fish. By this time, it was nine forty-five and we saw our only other boat packing up so we gladly did the same.
It was interesting that all day lots of swallows and swifts were working the water – but we failed to see any hatches of flies – I suspect that tiny black scrots were coming off.
The man of the match was David Tyrie, he had four and lost as many more, David was using a DI5, blobs and a fast pull. – His boat partner Derek Kilgour had one on a DI7 and an orange booby.
John Miller had three using a slow intermediate and a sunburst FAB. John Levy had two – one a magnificent fish of eight pounds. He used a floater and a black Diawl bach.
This was a very wet and cold evening, not what we would expect for June – but it must get better. I was far too busy casting and changing flies to have time to take any pictures, this, I am sure will be appreciated by Colin who has the onerous task of making my pictures as presentable as possible.
As I will be away to Watten, Stewart has kindly agreed to stand in for me at Menteith on Sunday the 24th June – I hope he, and you all, have a good day with dries. Just had a thought, my next outing is on Sunday 8th July at Linlithgow – it can’t be as bad again – can it?
