I have to admit I am a wee bit late in writing this one up. Planned to do it at the weekend and other jobs got the better of me and I only just remembered this evening! A week late but better late than never.
Last Tuesday was my birthday and as has become customary, I always like to get out for a cast if I can. I was a bit lazy getting up and decided to cook breakfast for myself as a wee treat. Not something I do that often but that put paid to most of the morning and I still had some stuff in the car to clear out from last Sunday’s outing to the Annan to clear out. I saw a few posts of fB about Grayling day and a few fish were caught but it wasn’t what you would call a “bountiful harvest”. Especially considering the number of anglers on the water, which was pretty high all things considered.
So I just carried on the theme of minimal effort and headed around to Swanswater, my local Trout fishery for an afternoon’s fishing. It was pretty quiet all things considered, with only four anglers on the main lochan, including myself. One chap had brought a spectator, I imagine it was his partner or wife, and they were set up near the dam wall. I asked him how he was getting on and he kind of shrugged and said he hadn’t had so much as a touch….but an angler fishing from the edge of the dam by the outflow sluice had had two.
The water was very flat and calm for the most part and the odd fish was showing on top mostly toward the dam wall.
I started with a floating line and a heavy lure on point but had no sign of interest. The angler who told me he had not had anything, looked to be fishing an intermediate line and almost as soon as I started my first cast, he hooked into a fish. It took him a fair while to net it, whether that was down to his spectator who was dealing with the net or he just wanted to play the fish out entirely I am not sure, possibly the latter as he was taking his catch, but eventually, the fish was netted and looked to be a decent sized fish. Within 10 minutes he had a second!
I decided to change to an intermediate line not getting any interest with the floater but this resulted in a lot of snagging weed so I ended up swapping again to a Slow Intermediate which gave me less hassle. Still no fish though.
I took a wander and fished up near the boat pier, there were definitely fish in this corner as quite a few showed in front of me here but my flies weren’t interesting them. I was trying pretty much everything, Small lures ( all the usual suspects) , buzzers, wet flies, slow retrieves and faster, nothing was interesting the fish.
“well you won’t be catching any fish”
I moved a few more times but the results were much the same. By mid-afternoon, I decided to head over to the island where another angler was coming the other way, evidently finished for the day. I had seen him hook and lose one fish in the time I had been there. He stopped to blether and said he had not had a thing until he went onto a bung with a blob five feet below fished static. I think I have made my feelings clear on bung fishing in a few other posts, I will do it when all else is hopeless but I am not a fan. He said once he swapped over he had three fish in rapid succession…..I did say I was probably a bit of a snob and tried to avoid bungs…he just laughed and said “well you won’t be catching any fish”.
The Dark Side beckons
I fished my current set-up for about another 10 minutes before I decided, “bugger it, bung time”. I couldn’t really utilise a dry fly as an indicator as the wind had got up a bit and I would probably need a beaded blob if I was to get them down and that would definitely pull a dry under…I find blobs to be a bit floaty unless pulled and so fishing static it needed a bead. I don’t actually have many blobs and those I do have are rarely beaded, because I don’t fish them static but fortunately, when I was fishing near the boat house I picked up a lost fly from the grass behind the platform…a barbless beaded pink bung with a fluorescent green bead on. Lucky!
The only indicators I had in my pocket were really for river fishing…I always have some airlocs with me, in case you end up fishing deeper runs for the Grayling where you can’t wade or manage a decent drag-free drift. I popped it on and cast it out ( casting an airloc is not the most elegant thing), I had the blob about five feet down and a buzzer about eighteen inches sub-surface.
Did I mention it was my birthday?
This is not my style of fishing, my concentration starts to drift fairly quickly. I have the attention span of a gnat at the best of time but I find normal fly fishing does keep me engaged. This chuck-it-and-leave-it stuff has my mind wandering. Did I mention it was my birthday? So as tends to be the way, my phone had been bleeping and pinging as people left me birthday messages and I ended up picking it up to see what had been going on. Out the corner of my eye I senses movement and looked up- the bung had vanished….I lifted, fish on. I was lucky. It hadn’t thrown the hook and I soon had a nice wee Rainbow Trout to the net of about two to two and a half pounds. With the fish released I cast out again. (You will have to take my word for this as the two photos I took of it, came out corrupted for reasons unknown….you have all seen a stocked Rainbow Trout I am sure….).
Stop looking at your phone Kenny.
It pings a few times with a different tone…what now?
It was a mate asking me about something to do with Clyde Valley HOG….I answered, he replied back….the discourse went back and forth for a few minutes, I looked up, and the bungs gone again…..I lifted…. there was a pull and a fish was clearly there, but then it all slackened off…..lost it.
STOP LOOKING AT YOUR PHONE!
I cast out again; the pinging started again more incessantly, more messages from my mate, what now? I picked it up and almost the instant I glanced at the phone I noticed the bung vanish, shit!
I lifted, there was slight resistance then the line collapsed in loose coils….another miss. NOOO!
I really should have switched the damned thing off…. but after that brisk 25-minute burst of activity, it all went dead and but for a nasty wee squall of rain that passed through there was nothing further to report. My first fish of 2023, well that’s something though it might have been more…. still, better than a day at work.
