If you could choose weather conditions for a day on the Lake, then you would be pretty happy with Sunday 14th June. The temperature remained in the mid teens, there was good cloud cover throughout the day and a pretty steady light Westerly. The only downside was a rather murky water quality, probably resulting from a very strong wind on the previous day.
Colin Riach was a late call-off, courtesy of a fall from a ladder, (I’m pleased to say that nothing was broken) but 15 anglers set off with high hopes of a successful day. The 8 boats set off in various directions as reports had suggested that there were fish pretty near everywhere, and that they were falling to a variety of methods, from blobs/boobies to dry fly.
Peter Cluness and myself started at the Road Shore along with a few other boats. The water was particularly dirty there and having had no joy ourselves, nor having seen any fish being caught, we headed for pastures new – in this case The Butts. There weren’t many boats in this area but the result of “nae fish” was the same. Our third failure was in the Heronry, where we had a lovely drift down the shore, despite having tried quite a few pulling patterns on various lines.
There were clearly quite a few boats in Gateside Bay and although we didn’t fancy the inevitable jockeying for space, we thought that we would at least see if fish were being caught there. It was indeed busy and we did see a few fish being caught, but decided to escape to the slightly quieter area of the Rookery where we could also see a few rods bending. A boat in front of us seemed to be hauling them out and Peter did get broken by a fish right at the start of the drift, but the eventual total remained at nil. Our mood wasn’t helped by a non-starting outboard, but we decided to cut our losses and spend the rest of the session just drifting down the North Shore. A couple of swirls were all that we could manage though and a very clean boat was returned to the shore.
Happily for the club, if not for ourselves, some fish had been caught, although not in the numbers that the conditions would seem to merit. Dave Tyrie and guest Jimmy McBride were top boat with 11 fish, pulling blobs on a fast glass in various parts of the water, Jimmy having 7 fish to his own rod. Dougie Skedd making a welcome appearance, showed that the more subtle methods could work too, with 5 fish on dry Klinkhamers. Derek Kilgour, Tam Forrest, Ivor Young, Bob Allan and a lonely John Levy all netted 3 fish to a variety of methods. The 15 angler total was 26 fish killed for 70 lbs with 14 fish returned. A satisfactory but somewhat disappointing total on such a good fishing day.
PS It is hoped that Trevor Gibson’s electric outboard, which went for a swim, has since been recovered. And the moral is……………!!!!
Stewart Barnes
