Is Winter Coming?

If you’re a Game of Thrones fan you’ll see what I did there with the title? It seemed apt after a wee outing on Friday.

I had a relatively limited time to fish as I was going out with my wife in the afternoon and was not set on any particular plan of action to fill the morning. As it was such a beautiful start to the day, though there was some frost, but not a cloud in the sky or so much as a breath of wind, I decided to head round the back of the famous Gillies Hill and head up to Loch Coulter for my first outing of the season.

There was one boat out already and as you can see from the picture below there was scarcely a breeze, midges coming off everywhere and I was set for some hopefully great sport.

Not a breath of wind, the sun was shining and it was pretty warm at this point

I had to go through the ritual of getting a spare boat back to the jetty but once done and having pumped out the boat I was using, not so easy when there is a coating of ice about half an inch thick on top of 3 or 4 inches of water, I was pretty well ready to go. I was sat on the grass in really warm sunshine and thinking to myself I might be too warm and was nearly leaving my heavier jacket in the car. But I decided to take it “just in case”.

Once out I headed down to the Plantation point and with a slight breeze at my back the boat slowly edged down to Burn Bay. I was I have to say a bit surprised not to see any fish activity, though did get one ever so hesitant pull on my cast of Kate McLaren, Diawl Bach and beaded Pheasant tail nymph. In the lee of the boat there were tons of shucks of emerged insects and various midges alighting all around. The wind was stiffening now and there was a distinct edge to it so I decided as a precaution you understand, to just put my jacket on. Then clouds appeared above, and there was the occasional spit of icy rain. Down in the Bay I had just been dangling my flies to give any curious fish a final chance to take, I commenced my back cast and as the point fly moved quickly to the surface there was a flash as a gold bar followed right in and then quickly turned away as the fly left the water. I decided to try a faster retrieve but that never worked and after covering the bay fairly well decided to head back upwind towards the water tower. The other angler on another boat had in this time motored down near me and after a short dalliance near Poachers Point decided enough was enough and I seen him head back to the moorings. The wind was a raw Arctic blast and by now I was wearing not only my coat, but my fingerless gloves that I fortuitously came across in the pocket of my jacket, my winter Balaclava and had both that an my hood up! It was utterly, utterly Baltic! I expected to see icebergs come drifting past with lonely marooned Polar Bears on board.

By 10:15 it was getting very cold and this picture seems to convey the wintery feel

How kind of Mr H*****w to leave his boat moored for me to put away.

I changed tactics again to allow me to fish deeper and slower with buzzers ( not a tactic I have had much luck with on Brown Trout I have to say) but in the absence of my heavy di5 or Di7 lines which I never brought with me, was the only way I felt I was going to reach the fish that I felt had to be hard on the bottom if they had any sense. What the hell was I doing here?

Enough, it got to 12 o’clock and I was too cold and never felt a fish was on the cards, time to head back in. But of course nothing could be that simple. The lovely angler who had the other boat hadn’t bothered to moor his boat and left me no place to get into the jetty. Dick!

The name on the lifejackets said it all

Lucky I was able to enlist the help of a passing bank angler otherwise I would have struggled to get in on my own, he removed the stern mooring on the boat left by the other angler- I have your name and photo’s as evidence and emails have been sent….. and I did the job they should have done, mooring the spare boat and then tying up my own. Knackered and freezing I was glad to be heading for home!