It’s an on-call week this week so my angling options are somewhat limited by my need to be in touch and not wanting to spend money on something I can’t “finish”.

I took a run up to Pendreich yesterday afternoon to kill a few hours. It was one of those days you spend time hoping for through the cold winter months as you look forward to the new season. Overcast but mild, barely a breeze and fish moving everywhere. In fact, it’s more accurate to say, fish jumping, as there were fish literally jumping out the water all over the loch.

The couple of anglers who were out had fished all morning into the afternoon and had nothing. It’s hard to say what the jumping is all about, I hear the comment that the fish are escaping from the pike, I think that’s bollocks frankly, a decent sized trout is probably way too big a mouthful for any but the biggest of pike and too fast for most. If there were that many pike in there they would be “howking” them out, but only a few are being caught and all very small jacks. That says to me the pike that are there are eating small stuff. It also though reminds us that if fishing Catch and Release we make sure fish are fully recovered before releasing them not simply lobbing them off the dam wall to go belly up.

A weak fish is prone to stress and disease and then will become Pike food. In this regard the Pike provide a useful cleanup service but on the flip side they are getting bigger on the back of it.

I was fishing dries- though threatened to put on a  weighted nymph in case fish lying deeper might be easier to catch. I tried loads of different dry patterns, the trusty Klinkhammer, shit flies, F Flies, CDC emergers, Deer Hair Comparadun, but even over rising fish got no interest.

I tend to think when fish are jumping- in places that are not stocked daily or whatever, that its because they are targetting something that moves fast and is worth expending the effort to intercept. Quite what the food item is I am not sure- I fished progressively smaller and smaller before deciding to fish big and lobbed out a Deer Hair Caddis. On the second cast, I got a very late rise to the fly- and unfortunately missed the take. But it gave me heart so I plugged away. I was careful to try just to target rising fish rather than cast blind.

Eventually, I saw a rise and a fish took, it was a cracker, my biggest of the season so far at Pendreich, for me and also my 100th fish of 2011. The fish was just “nicked” in the top lip and easy to unhook, after giving a good account of itself to my soft, Dicksons rod with a 5 weight line on. It unhooked easily and rather than faff round to take a picture I put it straight back and it took off like a bullet none the worse.

I managed to rise one more fish to the same fly albeit I think it refused at the last second but sometimes fishing bigger seems to be the answer. I never saw another fish caught all afternoon by anyone.