The last 3 club outings I was scheduled to attend have all been cancelled due to the weather. That’s a first! Today’s outing to The Watch Reservoir makes 6 outings this season that have been lost, 5 of them to the weather (the first at Linlithgow was down to the water quality). I thought I would have a look back and see if 2024 is an outlier, or the latest in a trend, pointing to climate change spoiling things more and more – in which case we can expect things only to get worse.
I started with 2009, as it is easy to get the data from that point forwards from this site.
2009 No outings lost
2010 No outings lost, though first one to Butterstone was moved back a week due to being frozen in March.
2011 Two outings lost, back to back in May. Menteith on 23rd and Carron on 29th. I took this photo of the Forth from my window on 23rd May…
Now that’s worth cancelling an outing for!
2012 No outings lost
2013 Two outings lost, though the first in March was due to Menteith being frozen over…
They’re standing there patiently, as if it is suddenly going to melt and let them get out! Note that someone has already tested the water by trying to drive a boat through it!
Also lost was Linlithgow on 14 April due to wind.
2014 No outings lost
2015 Two outings lost to high winds: Menteith on 28 March and Glencorse on 09 August
2016 No outings lost
2017 No outings lost
2018 One outing lost, Glencorse on 23 September. This was cancelled 4 days prior to the outing and the forecast proved to be inaccurate.
2019 Two outings lost to foul weather: Black Loch on 14 September and Coldingham on 06 October
2020 No outings lost (apart from to Covid)
2021 No outings lost
2022 Two outings lost to high winds: Menteith on 13 May and Frandy on 03 September
2023 Menteith on 21 October lost to Storm Babet. (In addition, Linlithgow on 07 October was cancelled due to water quality.)
2024 The following lost:
16 March, Linlithgow, due to water quality
06 April, Frandy, due to wind (Storm Kathleen)
08 June, Frandy, due to wind
10 August, Watch Water, due to wind
24 August, Menteith, due to wind
14 September, Watch Water, due to wind
My fishing trips this year make for some interesting comparisons with the above.
On the 8th June, when the Club was happily avoiding being blown about on Frandy, John Wastle and I were out on Craggie. It’s bigger than Frandy, and you are restricted to an electric motor. I was thankful for my new 70 lb motor…
We couldn’t very well cancel it. We would have lost our money and we had driven a very long way to fish it. So, we just had to brave it. Rather than try to fish wet fly – and spend half the day picking the flies out of each others backs, we spent the whole day dapping. It was fun trying to get the fly down onto the water. This was in the sheltered corner…
First week of July saw 4 of us on Orkney for a week of trying to fit in with constantly high winds. We dodged about, fitting in a rest day on the windiest day, and eventually only lost half a day’s fishing. I usually come back with loads of fishing photos. But this year I left the camera in the digs and took a grand total of one… with my phone. Dougie on Boardhouse…
Not to worry, though. I had two 3-day trips to Loch Hope for the salmon and sea trout, end of July and end of August. All that wind and rain is just the ticket for the salmon and sea trout fishing. So, what did we get?
Ah well…
Meanwhile, looking at the above, 2024 does seem to be particularly bad. We have not lost more than 2 outings in any other year in recent times. Fingers-crossed for 2025…
On the bright side, with the changes of the weather come the changes in information and its dissemination. Nowadays, it is a very rare thing for the club members to turn up to an outing after getting up at an antisocial time and driving an hour to get to the venue. Thanks go to Mel and his predecessors for liaising with fishery managers and reaching an early decision to pull the plug on an outing, based on the forecast – and then in contacting everyone on the outing. It’s saving a massive amount of chasing of wild geese. In days gone by, it was usually a case of having to travel to the outing in a state of 90% certainty it was going to be cancelled. Only to take one look, get the nod, turn round and come back home. I remember one such occasion: Menteith, 20 September, 2004. I took this photo through the window of the lodge…
And those of us old enough will remember the days of Loch Leven when we had 6 or 7 evening outings in a season. We’d all be travelling straight from work. No mobile phones or internet back then. No matter what strength the wind, there was no choice but to travel to the loch to find out that it was cancelled. And then of course there were the ‘optionals’. It’s blowing a hooly, but the fishery management aren’t about to take the decision to cancel it. That would lose revenue. So, announce it is up to you if you want to go out. And there were occasions when some did, while others went home. I noticed, compiling the above data, one outing report from Linlithgow, where it was made optional. Most went home… except for Trevor!
And thanks also go to the Club Secretary and fisheries for so often managing to rearrange a new date to replace a cancelled outing.
If anyone wishes to add to this topic, please email me (or use the contact form) and I will add any comments I receive.
Colin
