This visit to the Watch was meant to take place on Saturday 14th. However, high winds caused a reschedule to 3 days later. And what a change those 3 days brought! The light westerly breeze at the start was perfect, Unusually, rather than get up, it fell away to near flat calm through the afternoon. And the forecast of cloudless sky was wrong. We had decent cloud for a good proportion of the day. It also warmed up significantly through the afternoon.
With spare places available as a result of the rescheduling, I brought Ron Sharp along as a guest. At the talk of there being some big brownies on the go, and what with us being fresh from a salmon and sea trout trip up north, we both brought our dapping gear with us… just in case of a chance…
We both started-off on dries, though. I took us over the the south shore for a drift into the boils corner. And I had a fish first cast – to a size 12 black hopper on the dropper. We started getting tuned-in and were seeing the occasional rise. And we found that any rise accurately covered had a good chance of a take. The next 2 also came to the hopper. I had put a foam beetle/terrestrial on the point, and the dropper being favoured precipitated a change. There were a few small buzzers on the go, so I put a size 16 shuttlecock in its place. That picked up the next 3 fish. Ron followed suit and went with a black hopper and shuttlecock, and was soon picking up fish.
Around the middle of the day, the chances to the dries slowed-up significantly. Ron decided to have a go with the dap. He put the rod up and put on a thing like a the bastard son of Loch Ordie and Kate McLaren. We did a drift across the middle and by the time we reached the downwind shore, Ron had had half a dozen chances. He got hold of one that didn’t stick, but the dap was definitely getting a lot of interest. By comparison, I had only one offer to the dries on that drift. So, I was going to join Ron on the dap, but by the time we went back up to the top of the wind, it died away completely. And save for the lightest of whuffles throughout the afternoon, that was it wind-wise for the day. So, we both fished dries through to the end.
The afternoon was a lot harder than the morning. I tried quite a few different ideas, and the best I could find was a size 14 black bits-come-half-hog on the dropper and the original shuttlecock on the tail. The rises were less frequent and covered fish were inclined to ignore the flies. We had to rely on the occasional one coming out the blue. We couldn’t see much of anything on the water except for miniscule scrot – which might have been what was being taken. It was noticeable that when it went flat, there was an incredible number of small wild brownies rising across the whole water. Obviously, the water has escaped the attentions of cormorants… so far!
Ron and I finished with 12 to the boat. The club’s 7 rods caught 41 fish.
