An absolute cracker of a day, weather-wise! It was a cool start, as the weather was still off the east and we had good cloud cover. But winds were light (mostly south-easterly), and the morning cloud gave way to bright sun for most of the afternoon, which brought the temperature up to the point I had to peel off all the layers I started with. I was also glad I had put the Factor 50 on before leaving the house.
The car park was busy for a Wednesday. But then someone pointed-out there was a heat of the national on. Aw naw – Andrew-backers and desperados going to be cutting us up all day! Oh well…
I was paired with Fraser Gault, and we set out with dries. I went with a match for the usual early season buzzers: a sooty olive shuttlecock with a touch of orange on the dropper and a sooty olive paraloop hopper on the tail. Fraser started with a single top hat suspender buzzer. We started out from the Butts. It was still cold and, despite the calm, there were very few rising fish. However, the first good news was when I turned round at 9 o’clock to see the armada heading up the water in a line… to fish at the cages. That was them out the way for the whole day!
There was not much fly about. However, after a while, we started to see an occasional rise. Before long, I got a chance at a cover from a fish right in front of the boat. I put the flies down, and it lollipopped the shuttle like a sweety. A good start.
The next chapter was a bit of a shaggy dog story…
We were sitting in a flat calm in front of the reeds at the butts. Then, the osprey appeared, tracking across the line of trees. I laid the rod down to get the camera out to get a shot of it. Next second: “SSSShhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…….” I wondered what was happening. Then I realised it was the sound of my Loop reel having line stripped off it at a rate of knots. A fish had taken my shuttle and, on feeling the nylon, had bolted off like a scalded cat! It was now heading full tilt into the reeds! I had to lay down the camera and pick up the rod, which had been pulled round was now pointing straight down the line. I then had to resist the temptation to try and tighten or I would have been snapped. I had to raise the rod up and then carefully apply some pressure. All this time the fish was heading into the reeds. I got the rod up and managed to slow the fish. Then I managed to dig it out of the reeds. Remarkably, I landed it! I never did get the osprey shot, though. A good advert for the Loop design, I thought. A lot of other reels would have had an over-run and bird’s nested – then snap! The Loop is impossible to over-run.
The breeze got up a bit, and it went a bit quiet on us at the butts, so we took a look down at Tod Hole, which was catching shelter from the south-easterly. Here, we found a good run of fish rising tight to the shore. An accurate cover had a good chance with them. I was aware that I was the natural inside rod and was getting the best of it. I couldn’t turn the boat round, what with Fraser right-handed and me left-handed. Using the Minn Kota ghillie, I did my best to keep us both with a chance. We picked up 2 or 3 fish along that bit of shore before they had had enough of our company. After that, we tried down at the reeds between Jimmy Nairn’s and Bogle Knowe. Not much action there.
Next, we leap-frogged the boat that was spending the entire day hogging the same 10 yard spot between Tod Hole and the pike nets areas. I would love to know why. We headed up to the south-west corner and found fish – again tight in to the reeds. We started to get some action going with them and added several to the boat. Fraser had now changed to a hopper and was doing better than with the top hat. Some of the fish were in supercharged mode. I had one that was standard stamp and nothing special, condition-wise, that took my whole line and 30 yards of backing out!
Although the afternoon was much brighter than the morning, I think the increase in temperature and the increase in fly life compensated for things, as we had much the same catch rate in the sunny afternoon as we had in the cloudy morning. Not that the fly life was prolific – mostly a few scrotty wee buzzers.
With about an hour on the clock, we went over to the Road Shore/International Bay area, where we had found the afternoon roving packs last outing. And again, we found fish there. Not so much roving packs, but more a case of: now you see us, now you don’t. But we did quite well with those guys when we were seeing them, and we had a good last hour.
I never changed a fly the whole day!
Jimmy Millar and Dougie Skedd had a good day on dries as well, landing 19 to their boat on the likes of a size 14 crippled midge and a size 16 CDC. Jimmy’s bag included this spanking fish at 6 lb, taken in a foot of water at Arnmach…
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The Club’s 14 rods landed 83 fish.
