As I left home and started towards Coldingham the sun was shining from a bright blue sky and it was very warm – As I crossed the bridge at Kincardine I thought wouldn’t it be nice if we got a bit of cloud cover – I should have remembered that the French say be careful what you ask for as you will surely get it. Heading for Falkirk, the sky darkened – oh good said I. On the Edinburgh ring road the rain started, it was not very heavy and I thought – oh good that will cool things down a wee bit. Passing Haddington the rain started in earnest and the road was like a river – oh said I. As I left the A1, it was still raining hard. The A1107 was full of deep puddles – it can only get better, I thought. When our small contingent had assembled at the loch we huddled in the lodge listening to Gareth telling us how good the fishing had been in the morning, but he was not holding out great hopes for our evening outing. This was a shame as we were all looking forward to top of the water sport with dries.
When we started, it was raining and most of us started with sinking lines, Stewart started with a floater and dries – how he managed to keep fishing dries I do not know as the weather got worse and the rain at one time saw the rain dancing on the surface of the water. However, Stewart netted and returned two nice fish. I started with buzzers and on my first cast had a fish on as my flies hit the water – I then thought two things at the same time – good and a fish on your first cast is the kiss of death. Then I spent a few hours casting, retrieving and bailing the boat. At about eight thirty I was flicking my line out as I attempted to untangle the line that was on the bottom of the boat when the knotted line whizzed through my fingers and the knot hit the stripper ring on my rod and in slow motion I saw the agate core of the stripper ring pop out in two halves! But my rod was still bent and the fish was still on – so with no skill on my part I also had two fish. Our other fishers landed another four between them – I cannot give you details of what was used to get them as all of our outing cards were like mush.
The water was 13oC and when we started, the air was also 13oC but dropped to 12oC shortly after we started. Only one fish was killed for the pot and seven were returned. This resulted in a rod average of 1.14 – not what you would expect from Coldingham but we all get days like that – and it makes me keener to get back for another go.
Regards: Ed.
