I am disappointed that Colin is away up to Orkney (am sure he will have had a great time and I hope he has some photographs to show us when he comes back) if he had not gone to Orkney he would have been at this Coldingham outing and he would be writing this report. The fish at Coldingham, rainbows, blues and browns are the best quality fish I have ever seen at any fishery, and they were rising – not often but they were taking on an evening that was bright and with a cold NNE wind blowing about 6MPH. That is the reason I wish Colin had been doing this report – he would have given us a much better appreciation, and photographs, of the loch on that day.
When our evening session started at five thirty, the sky was bright blue with a cold wind blowing from the NNE. Water temperature was 11o C and the air was the same. As I had arrived at the loch at three o’clock (I had been instructed by my manager to drop my son at Edinburgh airport no later than one o’clock) so I had lots of time to watch three boats that were pulling and only saw one-person catch a fish. Derek Kilgour and I were sharing a boat so we both went with dries as we had seen a few periodic rises before we set out. Our first drift was from the lochside cottage, the wind took us SW – on our first drift I had a swirl and Derek had a fish that fought for a good ten minutes, when it finally came to the net it was a solid four pound fish that had a tail like a shovel – a perfect rainbow. We repeated this drift for most of the evening – every drift, except one, had fish looking or swirling at our flies, but hooking them was difficult. As the evening wore on (one minute it was five thirty and suddenly it was nine o’clock) the action started to fall off, so we moved to the west end of the loch… just as the wind dropped. Up in the NW corner many fish were rising and Derek and I added a few more to our bag. Then the wind just fell away to give us a flat calm. Derek changed his flies and put on a single small sparkle gnat. This set up got him two more fish – I on the other hand stuck with two size 16 loop wings and got no more. At the end of the day, Derek had ten and I had six, one of which was a magnificent brown trout of about three pounds. We were both reluctant to stop at ten o’clock and wished that we could have continued as the Caenis flies were prolific and the first we had seen this year.
Trevor Gibson had a floater and his buzzers on and using a fig of 8 landed eight fish, his boat partner Dougie Goddard had two on dries, a black hopper fished static.
David Tyrie had a ghost tip and a nemesis; using a fig of 8, he had two fish. Ken Hastings also had two.
The club netted thirty fish, twenty-six of which were returned. Six fish weighing 12 pounds 9 oz were taken for the pot. A rod average of five – not bad for a difficult day.
Again, I cannot emphasize the quality of the fish at Coldingham – if you have the time and want a good fight from a top quality fish visit Coldingham now before the water heats up. Our next outing to Coldingham is on Sunday 19th August and we have one spare place – first come first served – if more than one member would like to come, I think we could get an extra boat if we asked soon.
With luck, we will have good sport this Friday evening at Linlithgow Loch, but the weather may not be the best.
Tight lines: Ed.
