Backwards Fishing

Another wee outing to Coulter this afternoon and what an afternoon of sport it turned out to be. I have to say it has been the most enjoyable few hours I have spent on the water in a while.

With grey overcast skies, but not cold, and a bit of a breeze in many respects the conditions were perfect. 

The water in the loch was very low… certainly a lot lower than I have seen in some time so I imagine Scottish Water must be taking water from it at present. While the weather has been OK of late, it has been pretty typical July….mild but quite wet at times. ( My wife begs to differ and says it’s been very dry…but I have been soaked a few times out on the motorbike so I am sticking to my opinion!).

As I was gearing up in the car park an old friend came by walking his dogs. He stopped for a chat. Sadly, he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s (he is only at most a year or two older than me) and while he seemed to be taking it all very stoically (I think he has had some time to get used to the diagnosis) it can’t be easy. While he blethered away for a while even asking about my Mrs I couldn’t help noticing he never used my name once. He even admitted that by the time he reached the gate with his dogs, he would have forgotten the conversation and it would likely come back to him later in the day. He was saying though, how odd a condition it is, as he says he is the only one that doesn’t realise anything is wrong.

Keeping active is the main thing he can do and he was saying how much he enjoys working his two Labradors when the shooting season starts.  It reminds us all I think how life can throw us some shitty breaks and you just need to go out and do stuff while you still can.

Anyway, I digress, 

That wind; it was blowing the wrong way for comfortable fishing on the bank nearest to the boathouse…I had my waders on, essential in such conditions and I was fishing backwards ( i.e. sending my forward cast at the bank and letting the line go behind me out to the deeper water) to keep the line away from me. 

As I fished, a couple of wets with a wee lure on point, a fish swirled not a rod length from me, but I got no reaction to my flies flicked over the spot. The wind was quite severe at times and there was a decent wave on the water so I decided a move was in order. I was just about to head down the north bank and I to the bay beyond but then I noticed the only boat out had moved away from the Burn Bay opposite and seemed to be heading that same direction, so I decided the southern bank was a better option.

This proved a fortuitous decision.

With the water so low I was able to cut the corner and walk right around the edge of the loch without taking the cross country route.

I noticed the wee peg markers that have been put in the shallows recently to mark where a very rare moss have been planted by Nature Scotland. I stayed well clear.

Along the edge of the shore facing the dam wall, I started fishing and I realised that where I was standing, I would normally be fishing into from a boat, but the water is so low it’s pretty much dry. By the time you wade out to thigh-deep deep you are actually a long way into the dam end bay.

I cast out and it never took long before I felt a tug then as I retrieved the flies right in there was a splashy wake and a grab at the point fly. I thought initially it was a Brown Trout.

And then I started thinking whatever I was hooked into might be tail hooked as it was fighting really hard. At one stage, I became snagged up in weeds. I could feel the fish was still on the end of the line but was clearly otherwise snagged up. So where I had been working my way back to the bank to get my net, I was now heading out wide and deeper to try get clear of the snag. And suddenly I was free…and the fish was away again. Then I saw it…a Pike. Or a Jack Pike to be precise, somewhere between 3 and 4lbs. What a fight it put up. In the end, I had moved so far from the net I decided to walk the fish backwards onto the muddy bank. That gave me time to go grab my net to contain it and get hold of my forceps to get the fly out…it was hooked in the corner of the mouth so was no real effort to set it free. Unfortunately, it also managed to slip the net as I unhooked it…so no photo, I am afraid!

I noticed the Osprey turn up around this time. I had actually brought my camera and a long lens in hope I might see it. It’s heavy so I wasn’t carrying it with me around the loch but I thought if it turned up while near the car I could grab a decent shot. By now I was on the opposite bank so no decent photo’s. It did once again manage to snare a fish that was at least as long in the body as the bird itself and flew off over the adjacent farm.

After several pulls and a couple more small Perch, I realised that I probably wasn’t going to get a trout here so I decided to work my way down the bank towards the point. The wind seemed to turn a little in this period and by the time I reached the point, it seemed to be coming directly behind me…so a 90 degree swing around. This was probably going to require more backwards casting.

I had stopped for a break and had noticed the odd fish rise in the wave. They certainly weren’t prolific and you pretty much had to be looking right where they were rising to spot them but they were there. So I tied on three dries…not something I usually do, normally I would just fish a pair but in the conditions I thought it would be fine.

And indeed it was.

As I fished there was what seemed to be a splashy rise at my flies and I lifted …but at the almost precise moment the Osprey came right overhead….it did cross my mind either the bird had spied the fish, or the fish had spied the bird. Would a trout be aware of an Osprey? I suspect not unless maybe it was particularly bright and the bird cast a shadow? I wondered for a minute if the bird had put the fish off….I needn’t have worried though.

Within about two more casts in the same area…fishing straight out with the wind behind me, there was a splashy rise, I lifted… no resistance and then as I dropped the rod tip and tried to recover the slack, the line tightened as the fish appeared to have another go at it…. And a decent fight it was as well with a good-sized rainbow trout coming to the net having taken an Orange foam-bodied Daddy.

While I was playing this fish, another swirled very close to the right of where I was wading. As soon as the flies were re-treated with desiccant, I tried a cast to the right across the wind. A fish head and tailed heading away from me ( I saw the dorsal fin) but very close by so I quickly recovered the flies and flicked them out in front of where the fish might be headed. Within seconds the fish bobbed up and took the merger on the dropper. Number 2 to the net… dare I say that was almost too easy.

I cast out straight again and several more fish topped near the flies but I detected nothing when I lifted. In the very flat light with small waves, the flies were close to invisible at times, and the rise forms were incredibly hard to spot, but then once mor,e there was a rise and I lifted into a third fish. Yet another Rainbow Trout.

As I intimated earlier, most of the time I was casting backwards, to get across the wind without catching myself. I find I can cast almost as far backwards as forwards. It’s such a useful skill to have and really not hard to learn but makes areas that would otherwise be out of bounds much easier to fish. I do find at Commercial waters it gets some funny looks, but it works for me.

Again there were more risers near my flies before, once again, another take and that was number 4 to the net.

This was the best fun.

While the rises were hard to spot it became evident to me that it had definitely quietened down after a while so I decided to work my way, the long way round the entire loch and I would fish if anything showed. Nothing did. But I did stop for a cast in a couple of places but got no reaction.

It was a pretty tough walk in the warmth of the afternoon, which did get quite sunny at times. Wearing waders and wading boots isn’t the best for what transpired to be an over 2 mile hike across pretty uneven ground with a dodgy ankle, but I got there.