It was a solid mid-week turnout for the Club, with 8 boats out for the day. We were also joined by a guest angler, David Hannaford, who fished with our new club secretary, Mel Mitchell. Congratulations to David on your first outing with the Club and great fishing to end with 7 fish. We hope you had an enjoyable day with Mel. Most of the boats were out once again; very few left on the shore. The conditions were really very promising to begin with. If I was being picky, a bit more of a breeze would have been even better (from a selfish perspective), but it was humid and overcast and ideal conditions. We hoped for hatching insects: alders, mayfly, the odd daddy and emerging/adult buzzers. It felt like the fish should be active and high in the water.
I fished with Jimmy McBride, who has been a regular visitor on the Lake for the past couple of weeks and who has been enjoying a rich vein of form. Our club was also competing in the Scottish Clubs on the Saturday night, so we had a reasonable feel for the areas that have been working, albeit every day seems to be different right now. As usual, the boats spread out far and wide. Our first stop was the gap running into Sandy Bay. Jimmy was set up with the dries and did not change all day – that tells its own story. He started with a couple of suspender buzzers with a Shipman’s in between. As an honorary member of the heathen club, I set up initially with the washing line, small candy booby on the point and a couple of olive buzzers. First few casts I got a couple of follows but without connecting. We could see a lot of fish feeding in the quiet water in Sandy Bay, along the tree line. Often these fish can be very tricky and, although actively feeding, it can be a frustrating area when there is little wind (there was, in the lee of the east breeze)… unless you are prepared to be very very patient. We decided the better of it and moved on.
Next stop was the edge of the heronry heading slowly towards the plantation. There were only one or two other boats around, and they were fishing more over towards the Malling Shore. There were a few fish showing by the burn mouth, which was flowing surprisingly strongly. Jimmy immediately triggered a lot of interest. At one stage it seemed a surprise when the fish left his flies alone. Nothing you can do sitting at the sharp end with the wrong set-up other than to change as quickly as possible before the big fella jags them all. I quickly changed to a couple of shuttlecocks, with a buzzer in between. This worked to a certain extent, but no where near as effectively as Jimmy’s set-up. He was enjoying some great sport. I had got the odd bit of interest and it was enough to keep me interested. I managed to keep the dries out of harm’s way: the mouths of the few fish who came to play. I never seem to learn to slow down for the rainbows. Jimmy calmly worked away, just happily enjoying his sport and it mattered not a jot to him if the fish managed to avoid the net, as long as he managed to fool them. On the other hand, I had already had to tie up a few fresh dry fly casts. The agricultural approach is certainly not appropriate for the quality of fish we were encountering.
By this time we had worked our way to the Malling Shore. It had been a great start to our day, with loads of sport. Let’s just say at this stage the sport was not evenly split. I changed yet again, back to the washing line and it picked up a couple of fish right by the silage pit, Jimmy kept the fish coming to his dries, even in the shallow water right on the shore line. It’s remarkable what size of fish patrol these margins.
We moved back towards squirrel island, which has always been a puzzle to me, but it is the crannog just in front of stable point. We found some fish right on the point, but not quite enough to keep us there for too long. From there, it was down to the rookery. There were a lot of fish in this area on Saturday night, but they were difficult to keep hold off. The wind was in the other direction and once again the fish were holding right in front of the cages. Not sure how it happened, but we were now almost level-pegging on number of fish apiece.
We picked up no fish at Sam’s so went right across to International Bay. Remarkably no boats in sight. Almost straight away Jimmy was back into fish. He had changed to his Tinker Bell on the point and he was very much back in the game. I decided to have another quick change: dries with a beetle in the middle and it was more of, close but no cigar, dropping two.
The temperature was slowly building through the day but the fish still seemed to active. The Mayfly hatch picked up during the day. We headed back towards the plantation for the last couple of hours and finally I managed to pick up fish to the dries: olive grunter and a sedge pattern were working quite well.
It was a very enjoyable but mixed day’s fishing for the club, ending with 93 fish across 16 rods.
