Glencorse looked very promising as we stood looking at the water, a nice ripple and a few rising fish, the air temperature was 14°C with a very light WNW wind.
Nineteen of us went out with high hopes. I was fishing with Alan Brown, a guest who would like to join us at the end of the year. Alan armed himself with a sink tip line and black flies – he had an ace of spades on the point and black and green on the droppers – Alan worked away with these and landed three nice fish. I went with dries and with these; I had swirls, bumps, one that broke me and another two that came off, however I only managed to land one. At the end of the day, I was talking to Dougie Skedd. What he was saying made me realise what an idiot I had been. I am forever telling other fishers that the secret to dry fly fishing is getting your leader to sink and in the last couple of years have been using fluorocarbon to get my leader below the surface. The water at Glencorse was calm with a thick meniscus and I am now sure that my leader was lying on the surface for all the fish to see. (My claim is that in the bright conditions I could not see this) Therefore, I have learned the lesson yet again.
Mr Skedd, doing the correct thing, put us all in the shade by landing eleven fish, most of them on size 10 claret hoppers and some on a wee Klinkhammer. His boat partner, Ivor Young landed four fine fish. Trevor Gibson fished buzzers, Alex Ramsay using an inky pinkie on an intermediate line and Derek Kilgour all had three each.
The water was clear and at one stage the air temperature rose to 22°C, the water was 10°C. During this period a few sulphur duns were hatching.
Then at 16:30 hours, the heavens opened and this sent us all hurrying towards the beach. Just for information, having been advised to try PVC waterproof trousers, to stop ones bum getting soaked when sitting in a boat – I got a cheap pair from the farmers shop and they work – no wet bum in the heavy rain.
See you at Carron on Sunday 26th May.
Ed.
