In terms of our fishing day it was another inauspicious start on the Lake. Jimmy McBride and I initially headed across to the butts area but focused more in the middle of the buzzer basin. There were a lot of boats close in at Tods, working close in to the reeds. Quite a few boats had set-up in front of International Bay and right down the road shore. There had been a SANACC heat the previous day and there were reports that these areas had all fished well and once again buzzers high in the water column had been one of the go to methods.
Jimmy started on the full floater with a team of muskins, snatchers and buzzers. I had gone for a booby, red holographic Diawl Bach and olive buzzer. The weather was distinctly cooler than our previous outing to the Lake this year and, although there were still obvious signs of buzzer activity there was not the same numbers as before. As a result, surface activity was fairly muted to start. Once again the wind, or lack of wind more like, was proving a bit frustrating, with any risers always just out of reach. On occasions where you could get your flies in front of the feeders you tended to get the odd response, and we both had a few early opportunities but failed to convert many. Jimmy picked up the first fish to a Bibio snatcher on the hang.
The wind picked up a touch and we pushed back to Kate’s Brae with the intention of setting up a drift heading towards Tod’s hole. We had a few half-hearted bits of interest, but the action was slow and, although the odd boat was picking up the odd fish, there was not a lot of encouragement to keep us in the area. In hindsight, we spent too much time in this area. As we headed back to base to warm up and pick-up a cup of tea, we had 5 to the boat with Jimmy on 3 but all to random stuff and all on the floater. I had chopped and changed from the midge-tip, through a variety of mini-tips, right down to a Wet Cell II, but nothing really worked for me. The highlight in the morning for us was seeing a huge bird of prey emerge from the trees round Tod’s Hole. White-tailed eagle? A mighty impressive beast seen close up in the wild.
Refreshed and warmed up, we headed back out and up towards the gap, to check out Sandy Bay. Once again there were a few fish showing but not enough wind to cover them effectively once we had set-up the drift. Jimmy kept on the same cast, but opted for a DI-3 and that immediately paid dividends, pulling nymphs at high speed definitely worked, and we found some resident fish. It was still slower for me. By now I had settled for the 6ft tip and it worked to some extent but not as effective as the Di-3. We worked the whole area down to the plantation and even in between the islands. There were random pockets of fish hoovering up the shucks and emerging buzzers as well as the odd pond olive. Getting your flies in the feeding zone did get a response. We had a rich vein of action for a couple of hours, which was very enjoyable, dropping as many fish as we hooked. We ended with 19 fish to the boat, Jimmy with the lions share on 11, 8 of them on the Di-3.
The Club’s 14 rods landed 69 fish.