Hot and Hard

Saturday was the second of this years outings with SCAC and we were booked for a day on Harelaw fishery, just south of Neilston near Paisley. So a bit out of the way from our usual club outings, though actually in point of fact it wasn’t as far as I thought.

Luckily or unluckily we also picked one of the hottest days of the year for our outing, so while it made for pleasant conditions to be on the water, equally it was never going to make the fishing easy and so it proved. Harelaw does though have one advantage in that it is a fairly shallow water, it varies little from around 12feet depth so the fish aren’t far down. It also has a lot of weed which provides cover for the fish but also means it isn’t so easy to go down for the fish. Fishing on or just under the surface is pretty much the order of the day.

Once everyone had arrived we were out on the water and my boat partner and I, Bill Campbell headed where it seemed many of the boats had headed early on, towards the tree-lined bay to the right of the lodge. Apparently this corner had fished well the day before ( in less sunny conditions). I had set up with a couple of Diawl Bachs and a Yellow Owl on point, from a floating line and on my second cast I contacted a fish but it never connected fully. It seemed like it had had a look at the Diawl Bach as I never saw the Owl move at all. The rest of the drift right into the margins was without further activity for me but close in Bill connected with a nice Rainbow and he was off the mark. I think it took an Orange foam bodied Daddy longlegs.

We had a second drift in here and I changed my point fly for a Daddy as well. Neither of us connected further fish though we saw the odd fish move here and there. Bill Ramage in the boat behind us on the drift landed his first fish on a Tequila Blob and my boat partner decided to give that a go now but had no luck with it.

We tried a drift from one of the Islands across the loch in towards what I think is the south bank without any luck but I did think I could see fish moving in one corner and I asked Bill to steer us into the side near the fish. Almost as soon as we got to the wee shallow bay I connected with a fish, and it seemed well hooked.

That is until it decided to go for a swim around the boat and went right round behind me which can often be the source of trouble trying to keep tight to it as you twist round in the boat. It did however seem to be going OK when suddenly it broke free. Not sure what happened, if the hook pulled out or the fish simply got the angle that allowed the barbless hook to lose its grip but no point crying over spilt milk…it was off.

Bill though rose and hooked a fish in much the same place almost as soon as this one got away and again he managed to have a bit more luck than me by getting it to the boat. There were fish moving all along this area and only we seemed to have spotted this and we spent a good hour or two fishing down this bank and into the bay at the bottom.

It was in the bay at the bottom that I finally managed to get a fish to connect and what a connection it was. I had a buzzer and a Teal Cormorant on with a black shuttlecock on the point when I felt a hard jolt as a fish took the Teal cormorant. The take was really hard and the fish took off like a train on some long powerful runs. I was really worried I was going to snag some of my loose line on something in the boat, but almost gratefully, the fish did a long enough run that let me spool up the slack and I was able to get the fish on the reel which made life easier.

Bill very kindly did the honours in netting a lovely Rainbow that had to be the right side of three pounds, Bill reckoned over three and a half, certainly it was a long fish with a huge tail. I think it had been in a while. Things finally went quiet here and we headed out into the main body of the loch. We were quite surprised that despite the by now very bright sunshine and quite blistering heat, there were fish showing here and there. Getting one to take however was not so easy. Both Bill and myself did manage to get interest from the odd fish here and there but never managed to hook any more. By the end of the day I was on a tiny Shipmans Buzzer on a single fly cast in bright green…there were wee bright green flies on the water the same colour as a greenfly ( aphid) but bigger. The two Bills in the other boat never managed any further fish either. Bill Ramage said he rose three or four but never connected in any meaningful way with any of them.

But an enjoyable outing somewhere new for me, I definitely think it is somewhere I want to visit again, I imagine the evening fishing must be good there when it is less bright. A day also for the factor 50 and a hat, as anything less and you were going to come off burnt to a crisp, especially so with the lack of a cooling breeze ( though that too can make things more hazardous. But there was plenty of chat and I thoroughly enjoyed the outing.