I haven’t been out since my “burst” of activity on my week off as the old aches and pains have been too bad. But the last couple of evenings I felt I could manage a short session with a light rod as long as I wasn’t “going for it” in the distance casting stakes and kept to light tackle. Tuesday though ended up a rotten night so I never went out, but Wednesday was sunny so I got out the house and headed out for a cast.

I arrived up at the loch about twenty past seven and was surprised how busy the car parking area was. There were about 7 or 8 anglers out, with at least three “tubers”. I think its possibly been the method of choice this year with the boat being all but useless unless you turn up with a gang!

I tackled up with the 4# weight and headed round to the south side as it looked quietest. There were fish rising, but most were about 40-50 yards from the dam wall, well out of reach. I made my way gingerly down the dam wall and spotted a few fish rise a little closer in, while I didn’t think I could reach them I reckoned it had to be worth a cast just leaving my LTD sedge in the vicinity. After about 10 minutes nothing had happened and the rises dried up here, though fish were still showing intermittently else where.

There were loads of daddy longlegs in the grass on the dam wall and I reckoned I had the wrong fly. To add to the problem, I never had any dry daddies in the couple of dry fly boxes I had in my pocket, having cleverly forgotten my fishing rucksack/stool and not being able to carry a few more fly boxes. Duh!

Having had a few casts on the south bank with the sedge and seeing nothing I decided to stop and change to another fly. I looked through my boxes and found two bibio hoppers, one about a 14 the other a 12. The smaller of the two looked a neater fly so I decided to tie this on to a fresh 4 foot length of 4lb Stroft and attach it to my tapered leader.

Having dressed the leader, tippet and fly with floatant and sinkant I cast out in the approximate area of a fish that rose while I was changing flies.Nothing happened so I twitched the fly a couple of times. Then it happened, a very decent sized fish came half out of the water right under my fly, and snatched it hard. I reckon it was at least a three pounder but could easily have been more as I only saw the head back to about the dorsal fin. I started to lift and felt the briefest resistance ( certainly not the full pull of the fish ) and the line went slack. I pulled the line in and noticed there was no wake where the fly should be. I thoght maybe I had made a bit of an arse of tying the fly on and maybe my knot had pulled through but in fact there was no sign of where the line had went curly as it pulled out the eye of the fly, and it was clean broken. It definitely wasn’t a “wind knot” as I had only cast it once and only a modest distance. It was clean broken, whether its been a bit dodgy line or the fish has sheared the nylon with its teeth as it grabbed the fly and the tension came on. I don’t tend to have breakages with Stroft, I find it very resilient so no idea which it was.

I was a bit gutted but tied on my one remaining hopper a size bigger and not such a neat dressing, but never had a sniff. I never seen anyone else catch, I thought one of the float tubers was into a fish at one stage but either it came off the hook or it wasnt a fish as he immediately recast where Ithought he would need to get the fish in.

The odd fish continued to show but not consistently and though I tried a few more patterns, that was the sum total of the sport in about an hour and a half. Good fun though.