Saturday- the day before father’s day and therefore D Day minus 1 ( D = Dads ! ). My lad, as I have said before, is not a big angling enthusiast but he can actually cast acceptably and we try to get out for a few hours on father’s day each year but this year, I have to travel for work in the middle of the day and in any case the weather outlook wasn’t great so we decided to have a few hours out at Loch Coulter on Saturday afternoon. nd very pleasant it turned out too. It was mild and overcast but actually turned very nice as the afternoon wore on. The wind was a little changeable but not so much to cause a problem at any time, really just right as we mostly had a nice ripple on te surface for most of the day.
Beaded micro-dancer wet fly
There was a fair amount of diatomous algae in the water though, especially on the south side. Not yet enough to have you constantly cleaning the slime off flies but it has to be affecting the sub surface visibility. Getting the boat ready is much easier when there are two of you and we were soon out on the water, I set up with three flies, a gold bead hares ear on the point, a Black Pennel on the middle and a Kate McLaren on the top dropper. My so I set up with a single fly for now to let him get casting with minimal chance of a tangle. He had one of my beaded micro Yellow Dancer wets on.
First Fish on the Kate McLaren
We just went out opposite the boat house and let the breeze slowly drift us in to the weeds where we turned and moved up the bay and tried again. On the first drift we had nothing and seen nothing move either, and on the second drift it was pretty much the same until we neared the end of the bay where the reeds start y to turn towards the end of the dam way when out the blue I had a sharp pull and a nice Brown of about a pound came in on the Kate.
We fished on here until the drift became too weedy and decided to move but had nothing more, Moving up the bay we positioned ourselves about 100 yards off Poachers Point and started another drift. This was the first time we seen fish move and about 50 yards off the point we decided to stop using the new anchor I got recently, and I swapped James’ fly for a dry, a wee F Fly that looked size wise similar to the wee sedges we were seeing now and again. The wind also dropped and the surface smoothed out a lot. I was pretty sure James would get a fish on the dry but in typical fashion the rise petered out. I changed my flies initially I swapped the point for a CDC emerger and put a small Diawl Bach and black spider on the droppers, fished washing line style. Then with no success on this I fished for the first time one of my attempts at an Organza Sedge Pupa patterns in the hope maybe this was the sort of thing the fish were looking for. We started drifting agin with the wind now quite changeable one minute it was behind us the next in front, and went right up Burn Bay and never seen a single fish.
Number 2 fell to the Sedge pupa Pattern
Red F-Fly James tried in a 16 but the fish never gave it a look
Finally we headed back to the corner along from the boat house and seen more fish move here though the ripple had by now become more of a slight wave. Once again the fish rising seemed to stop as we got to a position that allowed us to cover them and though we fished through the areas we seen the fish rise we never had so much as a touch on the dries or the sub surface patterns. Just as we toyed with calling it a day as otherwise it had been a great afternoon out, a fish moved right in near the bank. I was nearest and covered it landing my team of three flies bang centre of the receding rings of the rise, and right on cue there was a swirl and I was in to my send fish that stayed deep fighting doggedly. I actually thought it was bigger than it turned out to be but nonetheless a pleasing fish on the Sedge Pupa pattern which was cool. Having returned the fish my leader was in a bit of a mess and I decided to wind in and turn the boat round and try put James on top of some of the intermittently rising fish one more time with a Bubble wing CDC sedge on. He covered three or four fish really well, I can’t fault his angling but the fish just were not interested, so not sure what was wrong. Nonetheless a great afternoon we had a good laugh, told stupid jokes and had fun- surely what fishing is all about!
