The weather for our second Lake outing was nowhere near as bad as forecast. There was a bit of rain in the afternoon, but we got off lightly, and benefitted from 100% ceiling all day. The wind was south-easterly and altough never strong, it was annoyingly swirly when trying to keep tight to the head of it to fish dries.
Jimmy Millar and i set out to see what we could do on dries and, although we set up a second rod at various times, we never really used them. A decent buzzer hatch got going, but there was not the expected number of rising fish getting on to them. Really, the only fish rising were tight to the reeds, from Lochend, right along by Tod hole, the Butts and round to Chicken Leg. We concluded this was because that was where all the fish were lying, given that the 13 other boats fishing in that area were all about 10 feet from the reeds, and all of them were either twiddling or just plain puling (note the Wayners in the photos). A couple of boats had a big group of fish coralled into a corner of the butts and were giving them a tanking.
Meanwhile, we found the fish at the butts very difficult to tempt with dries. I did get a couple on a ginger crippled midge. But we were not doing as well as we should have been. We had a look elsewhere. Went up and round by Sandy Bay and the Heronry. Didn’t get the vibe there. Came back and looked in at Kate’s Brae – didn’t get the vibe there either. We eventually setlled at the reeds between Lochend and Bogle Knowe. Wee groups of fish would show for a minute then disappear. And again, they were tight to the reeds. I had an advantage, being a leftie on the left end, so nearest the reeds. Nothing we could do to square the boat up.
Jimmy tried a change to a suspender buzzer and that started wokring for him. I moved the ginger cripple to the dropper and put a top hat on the point. And straight away that worked. The rain was at its heaviest about this time and that kind of scunnered the rising fish. The buzzer hatch tailed-off as well, which didn’t help. We took a look back along at the butts, but nothing had changed, with a dose of boats strung out along the reed margin. We went back down to Lochend, but it was slow-going. We finshed with 10 to the boat.
Mel Mitchell adds…
First thing, the conditions looked perfect. The only doubt we had was that heavy rain was forecast for later in the day, but after the brutal start to the season that we have had we were more than happy to accept some rain. I was out with guest angler, Chris Tunnah. No sooner had we set off than we stopped again and set the boat up for a drift along Shear Point, back towards the Hotel. What a good decision that proved to be! I started on a 3 ft midge-tip and a washing line set-up, and remained on this set-up for the entire day. Chris opted for a floating line but, truth be told, he didn’t have much option, as one of his fly reels failed whilst preparing his kit the evening before and he was left with a limited choice of a floater or sinking line.
Within the first 5 minutes I netted my first fish of the day to a small coral-coloured booby on the point. We repeated the short drift and I continued to get tugs and follows, virtually every cast. I dropped a further 5 trout within the first 30 minutes. Seeing this, Chris tied on a similarly-coloured pink booby on the point. On the second drift we continued from Shear Point, on towards the Hotel, where Chris picked up his first fish of the day in front of the boats. No surprises – it was on the pink booby. After this good start, we set off for the Butts. There were a number of boats already there, but we were able to slide in and take a slow drift along the Butts towards Arnmach. Chris landed his second, again to the pink booby. It didn’t take long for what seemed like all the boats out that day to arrive up at the Butts. It was like London buses, with boats lining the shore from Otter Bay round through the Butts, up to Arnmach. We struggled to find an opening to fish close into the reeds, so we fished lines slightly off the shore and in more open water, off the Butts. There were plenty fish moving out from the shore and I picked up a second to the coral booby and a further 2 to a white cut-throat booby. Chris continued to fish the pink booby with a black Montana nymph on the dropper and picked up trout regularly on the booby and one to the nymph. He was fishing his floating line and waiting for the nymph to take the booby sub surface and then twiddle it back slowly with a figure of eight to keep it submerged. My midge tip similarly kept the booby very shallow – just under the surface. We both had a lot of interest to the booby, either on the surface or just submerged. For a short period in the afternoon things went quite calm and I had a further 2 trout to a yellow peacock-quilled buzzer.
It was clear that you did not need to be close into the reeds to catch fish. Whilst fishing up at the Butts we saw boat 8 with Darrel and Innes working the reeds. It seemed Innes would have been more at home in the romantic setting of Punting on the River Cam, as we regularly saw him standing upright in the bow using the oar to work their way slowly along the reeds. We thought the Lake had perhaps replaced one of their Coulam’s with a Punt. At one point, we saw them literally beached in the reeds. We thought we might need to add a new name of “Moses” to the club’s catch return sheet and fully expected them to present their catch at the weigh-in a hand woven wicker basket!
With the sport available we remained at the Butts for the duration and ended the day with 16 trout to the boat, the majority of which were taken on a booby worked slowly on or just under the surface.
The Club’s 15 rods landed 92 fish.
A couple of good browns were caught, including one by Adrian Coats – see photo by Keith Logan.
