The day was upon us; our final outing of the season. On arrival at the Lake, the temperature was noticeably chilly. A heavy, atmospheric mist was hanging over the area, limiting one’s view out over the water to about as far as Shear Point. Every other feature was lost to the mist. Ice was seen to be running the length of the gunwales on setting up. The big question, however, was where was the wind? The Lake was a flat calm; no ripple to be seen. The forecast for the day was for wind speeds of only 1 or 2 mph, with clear blue skies emerging as the mist cleared. Perhaps not the most ideal of conditions to end the season on.
We had another good turnout with 8 boats filled. For our final day our resident baker, Chloe Hannaford (David’s daughter), had baked us all some delicious Rocky Road as sustenance for later in the day. However, for some anglers their cake didn’t survive the carpark!
I was paired with Innes Zenati for the day and for some reason we decided we would head out in the general direction of Arnmach/Chicken Leg and start our day there. Setting-off involved a bit of pointing and hoping we remained on course as we headed out through the mist. Arnmach finally appeared out of the mist, but before we reached there we could see some fish moving on the surface, a little further out in the open water. So, we decided to stop and throw a few flies at them. I had initially set up on a fast intermediate and a single black lure. However, with the number of fish we unexpectedly saw moving, I quickly changed to a washing line set-up, with a booby on the point and a black nemesis and green tinsel diawl bach on the droppers. Innes also started on a washing line set-up, using a floating line. These fish continued to show, occasionally within range, allowing us to cover the odd fish. But they could not be tempted. With little or no wind we had also set-up the electric motor and used this to slowly manoeuvre around the fish we could see moving. There was a definite hatch on, with lots of buzzers coming off and constantly landing on both us and our boat…
I decided to quickly change again, to a single dry fly, and offered up a few favourite patterns to try and match this midge. After about an hour the number of fish moving had dropped and we still had nothing to show for our efforts.
We decided to head around Arnmach into Sandy Bay and try our luck there. There was a lot more green algae to be seen, but still little or no evidence of any fish. Innes decided to try and fish a little deeper and put on a yellow beaded cat bug with a short white marabou tail on the point. After only a couple of casts Innes landed his first fish of the day to the cat bug. We slowly moved about Sandy Bay and failed to connect with anything else. By this time I had switched to my 6ft midge tip and tried pulling various lures with a single dropper. Innes was now on what I think was a 10ft sink tip, trying something similar. A gentle ripple was now covering the water and we headed over towards Malling and tried a slow drift towards Dog Isle. Still with nothing to show for our efforts we then pushed a little over from Dog Isle towards Malling shore and continued drifting down towards Stable Point and Squirrel Island. Still fishing the 6ft midge tip I decided to put on a beaded white lure, having white fritz on the body and a short white marabou tail. This was the first white pattern I had tried all day. Just as we were approaching Stable Point I got my first offer of the day. That was quickly followed by another tug and I finally had my first fish in the boat. We could also see some fish moving on the surface that looked to be chasing something. We repeated this drift, starting closer to Sable Point and I picked up a second to the white lure. At this point you could be forgiven for thinking that all that was needed was something white on your line. I added a small baby doll to the dropper and I gave one to Innes who similarly added it to his dropper. Almost immediately we had a double hook-up with me landing another to the white lure and Innes landing one on the baby doll. This obviously didn’t go unnoticed and when we looked to turn and repeat there was a queue of boats tucked in behind us. We decided to turn to port, into Gateside Bay and join the many boats in there. I picked up another from the area in front of the boathouses, again to the white lure. Another hook up quickly followed, but this was dropped, just as its head went over the rim of the net. We then headed over to the Rookery and slowly worked our way into Portend Bay. We again started to see fish moving a little further out from the shore, which again looked like they were chasing something. We both picked up fish as we worked our way along the Rookery down to Portend. A final drift around Sam’s point offered nothing before calling it a day. After a very slow morning a better afternoon meant we ended with 9 fish to the boat.
With our traditional post-last outing venue, Poppies, now closed as a hotel, we retired to The Abbotsford, which we last visited over 20 years ago.
