If its Saturday it must be Frandy
Saturday was the SCAC outing to Frandy. The day started a bit dreich but the forecast was for a warm sunny day and little winds. I don’t know if it is due to the lochs location in a bowl in the hills but it was grey most of the day with the odd light shower and some very changeable and blustery winds which made fishing tricky at times. The wind blew in general towards the dam wall though it would change in the space of two gusts from blowing towards the left end of the dam, to blowing towards the right end.
I think if I said I saw 4 fish move all day I would be exaggerating wildly!
My boat partner was a chap named Dougie and he has had a couple of decent outings there so I pretty much left it to him to drive the boat as I hoped he would know any possible hotspots. Word was the far bank ( looking from the lodge ) down towards the Dam was Ok and the middle was fishing. A chap who spoke to me in the car park told me the place wasn’t fishing well, at least not from the bank, though he reckoned the boats might be OK. In the event I think if I said I saw 4 fish move all day I would be exaggerating wildly! It was dour!
Boat partner for the day, Dougie
Initially at least there did not seem to be any particular hotspot drawing all the boats. One or two fish were caught on a vaiety of flies and apparently near the surface, though not from my boat. I started my fishing using a floater with three flies ( wets and nymph styles – fairly standard stuff) then as the day wore on gradually worked my way through small lures, boobies, trad wet loch style flies, bigger lures and sinking, intermediate and sink tip lines. I had two tentative touches on a pink Bunny Leach around the mid section of the day and that was the sum total of action for the majority of my day. Dougie was just about to lift off a cast with a Yellow Dancer on point nearing lunchtime when a fish must have followed it up and it grabbed the lure. It put up a great fight for a fish possibly just shy of 2 pounds, before being netted.
Later in the afternoon Dougie hooked a second better fish but his leader wasn’t tied on right and he lost the fish and all three flies to it, near the dam wall. A few drifts down here after this and I had a very gentle tug and I hooked into a fish that frankly was a total surrender monkey and it came right to the net with barely any fight at all. It was nearly 4 lbs. I suspect it might have been hooked by another angler and been tired out, then got free or was released. Around this time all the boats seemed to be queuing up just a matter of 20-30 yards to our right – it seemed a lot of fish were near the dam wall where an inflow enters the reservoir. One of our club boats I think had about 12 fish ( seven to one angler and five to another). Most had 2-3 fish per angler in this area. By the time we had got in line we managed to touch one fish but a bit of an incident with a tangled line around a prop and a subsequent grounding on the dam wall and an engine that would not start after being tilted up meant we lost a lot of time in this area and by the time we fished it through properly I suspect the fish had either gone or lost interest .
The club group ( 8 anglers in this case) though managed a toal of 21 fish for 52(ish) lbs which was not bad in the conditions. And at least I have broken my recent blank run.
A Power hour pre Shower
I was a bit stiff this morning ( this sodding arthritic condition and yesterdays excesses were making themselves felt) and it was wall to wall sunshine in any case when I woke up so decided against heading out early (wasn’t sure I would be out at all) . Had I been able to I would’ve liked to have headed to the wee UAAA copetition at Glengavel, but I really don’t think I could have spent 5 or 6 hours standing beside/in the water regardless how keen I was. The pain would’ve been too much. So having filled myself with pain killers this lunchtime and given them time to get some sort of effect I went (almost relunctantly) up to Pendriech. The clouds had come in and really the conditions looked good though rain was maybe threatening. But its not been fishing well at all as you will be aware.
Mr Brownie- say cheese for the camera!
I was talking to a fellow member who was leaving as I got ready and he said that Will ( see last weeks post on Menteith) had had three fish and he had had one, all on small black dries. I knew this would be a Black Gnat- one of Will’s “go to flies”. Not a fish was showing though as I looked over the water. None the less I made my way down to the reed margin near the dam wall and seeing a few spent Golden Olive Dun type flies I put on a Deer Hair Comparadun and gave it a few casts up the margins. Its not the easiest spot to cast in and the wading is a little tricky- you need to watch the depth. Nothing moved so I wound in and made ready to move. As I did a fish leapt from the water right in front of me. Sod it! I was moving anyway! I moved to the boat mooring and as I unhitched my fly for a few more casts a fish rose about a foot from the boat. I decided that even though it was into a head wind, to cover it. The fly landed in the right spot, I waited and the fish rose and gently sucked in the fly. It was a very gentle take but I struck and it was on. And what a fish it was! A full two pound Brown and it fought like a trooper. I managed to get the line on the Hardy LRH reel and a few runs from the strong fish between huge leaps had the reel singing a few times. There is no drag on one of these- just got to let it run and maintain tension with a finger and the rod. Eventually it tired enough that I could net him and one of the nicest browns I have ever had from the loch was netted. The barbless hook came out in the net and the fish was rested then swam away. Result!
I dried off the fly, and then moving a few yards just past the boat cast towards the mooring barrels. The fly sat nicely and as it did a fish rose and was taking something just subsurface about 18″ from my fly- would it see the dry? A few seconds felt like forever but then the fly vanished in a dimple, I lifted and a second fish in two casts was on! Not as big as the first but this one was hungry, the fly right down its throat, and a forceps job to unhook, though it wasnt bleeding or in the gills, and again it swam off strongly.
The rain had started and I contemplated my next move, it looked like it might be on a while, as Will came down the bank, soaking in a teeshirt under his waders. He had been there a wee while and had had 4 fish and been broken by a submarine!. The rain was getting very heavy so I called it a day as did he, and though I had only had about 20-30 mins tops fishing, it was a brilliant very short session cut short by the weather.
Went back up the next day and totally blanked. I’d run out of black knats see, that was the problem! Interesting the wind had been easterly the day before when they were taking yet with the westerly they’d disappeared deep. One fish was caught by another guy (on a damsel I think). Gonna top up with the knats in the meantime..
Tied a few this week. Went up tonight for a very brief hour. Rain came on when I got there- wind westerly and very slight, almost calm. Never seen a fish anywhere. Tried dries and nymphs, nowt!