So as I have previously intimated I was fishing for Stirling Castle B last night at the Lake of Menteith. I was looking forward to it as I always do outings to this venue despite it having something if bogey status with me. Our three man team was Pete (Captain and regular of the LoM boat league), Billy (who had never fished the Lake) and me. Pete told us that during the week the fish he had caught had all been on a mini Cat Whiskers teamed up with a blob and a cormorant on a midge tip line. So that’s exactly what I planned starting off with. In this comp there is a max fly size of 1 and 1/8th inches so we aren’t talking about flinging out huge lumps of marabou and fritz tied to a lump of tungsten.
My boat partner for the evening was John Simpson of I think he said, Caley Liners. John had a bit of a clue what was going down here having already spent the day here and had 19fish!
(I think that was to the boat rather than himself – as he later said about having ten during the day and the same again at night but he had ideas where the fish were and what was working. )
My boat partner for the evening John Simpson
He was on the engine end and I was happy enough to be led to be honest. After the almost Le Man’s like start we were off at the front of the pack across a very lumpy lake and I was glad I had reproofed my boat fishing jacket as my back was drenched on the way up. We stopped in close to the bottom end of Gateside Bay and were soon fishing. On the first drift down John had his first fish on one of his Olive Cormorants tied on a washing Line arrangement with a tequila Booby on point and midge tip line . The first two fish for each angler were to be taken and weighed in, every subsequent fish was to be counted as 2lbs. His first fish must have been good for nearly 3lb I would think, it was pretty solid. I had nothing on that first drift and no one around us did either. I decided though to make a change. I had seen his cormorants were very sparse almost like buzzers and hadn’t come across fishing them on a washing line. Mines were all black and not so sparse so I opted to try a Diawl Bach and an olive hot spot buzzer with a coral booby on point to suspend it all. On this second drift down from nowhere I had a thumping take and was into a really good fish at least as big as John’s first and possibly more. It gave a couple if leaps and took off under jet propulsion to our left under my boat partners line. I felt it was under control though and I was happy to be patient to get it to the net. Then suddenly it went slack. Whit?!!!
Recovering the flies the top dropper where the hot spot buzzer had been was severed about half a centimetre from the dropper knot. I was gutted. I had actually spent time preparing my leaders before the comp and tied up some two dropper casts with properly tied double blood knot droppers as I feel they give a better presentation of the fly and are a better knot that the three turn surgeons knot. But tying them on the water is a pain so “be prepared” I thought. Quite why the dropper failed where it did I have no idea I can only guess I had cinched and weakened the tippet when I was tying it. At least the knot was ok and the other flies intact. I didn’t have another identical hot spot buzzer but had something similar so cut and retied the dropper using a surgeons knot and we were back fishing.
Next drift and John had his second and me nothing. Near the drift end, John moved the boat before I had fully pulled in my line-up had no choice to be fair as we were near the side and he had a fish on. But the boat went over my leader and I couldn’t get it back. I had the top fly on one side of the boat and the two droppers behind and though the line would pull back and forth it wouldn’t pull from under the boat like it was caught on something. So flies off, new leader on. Lucky I made spares.
Next drift down and as we were nearly into the lily pads and preparing to move a fish took John’s cormorant again.
But this one came off after a pretty long fight. Unlucky.
We decided to move after a few more fish-less drifts and moved up to the calmer top end of the bay.
