Cracking conditions for much of the day. Although it was an easterly breeze, it was mild (for an easterly). Good cloud cover a lot of the time, just spoiled by a bright period in the middle of the day.
John McGonagle and I both tackled up with dries. John had a smallish grunter and a pink daddy-hog, on fluoro. I went with a black half-hog and a black paraloop hopper, both 12s, on nylon. There had been a bit of ‘nylon or fluoro for fishing dries?’ recently, so there was a bit of a contest on.
There was very little sign of meat on the water, though a fish sampled half way through the day had some buzzers and quite a few buzzer shucks in it. We really never came across rising fish – just a very occasional oncer. Most of the fish that showed, showed to our flies.
We concentrated on fishing along the ripple edges, coming off the head of the breeze. John got off to a great start on our first drift, which took us along the reed bed of International Bay, round the shallow corner and along the shoulder. The fish were tight in – some in no more than a foot of water. I was outside rod at that stage, and I was getting nothing but fresh-air shots. Oh no, don’t tell me… not again! Could it be the nylon v fluoro thing? I stuck to my guns and eventually I got going.
We reached the point where we met the cross wind coming round from Shear Point and had to move. Boats coming in at the back of us prevented a repeat of the drift, so we went along the road shore, looking for a spot that would give us a ripple edge drift, coming out. We found one at Kate’s Brae, coming out from the quarry. That gave us a great spell, and we added several fish to our total.
We were just approaching the next cross wind point when one of us hooked a last fish before going back. We got spotted by a pair who proceeded to motor up the inside of us, through the fish and then took up position behind us, exactly where we were about to go back to. Superb! They eventually gave up and left, and we had another go. We did pick up a couple, but it felt like we had outstayed our welcome in that spot.
We headed over to Jimmy Nairn’s and picked up the breeze tight to shore. It gave us a drift all the way along the reed beds to Bogle Knowe and Tod Hole. We picked up a few fish, intermittently, all the way down, though it felt like they were slowing up as we got further and further into breezier water. I switched my black half hog for a black full hog in the bigger ripple, hoping to pull fish up a bit better. Meanwhile, John’s pink daddy-hog had lost its bit of pink foam and was now more of a deer hair emerger – but it was still drawing fish.
It was then a toss-up between repeating from Jimmy Nairn’s, or going down to have a look round into Sandy Bay. We decided to have a look at Sandy Bay. I stopped at the end of Arnmach. There was some mouth-watering water going down through the gap, with all slicks across it. I set up to drift it. However, about now, it turned really bright. No fish to be seen. Don’t know if it was a poor area – it’s usually hot, and it looked like it should be red-hot. But nothing. We blamed the sun. We went for a look in the quiet water of Sandy Bay. We saw the occasional oncer, but they were spread high, wide and handsome. And sitting in the calm on our thumbs wasn’t doing it. So, back down to the east basin it was.
In keeping the boat heading straight into the wind to avoid getting soaked, it naturally took us back to Kate’s Brae. So, we looked in there again, having given it a good rest. Sure enough, we picked up a couple of fish. The brightness was diminishing as we went over to have a second run at Jimmy Nairns, down the reeds. We picked up a couple more, taking our boat total to 14. Of those, no more than a couple were from covers, and the rest were ‘out the blue’. Then it slowed right up on us – must have been around 2:30 – 3:00 p.m. ish. We tried around another couple of spots – Hotel Bay, and then back to where we started. Getting on towards 4-ish, the conditions were the best we had had all day, and the fishing just was totally dead for us. We went for an early bath, having had a great day. Oh, and the result of nylon v fluoro for fishing dries? A narrow win for nylon… on this occasion.
The Club’s 14 rods landed 65 fish.
