Today was the club’s outing to Linlithgow. I haven’t been to Linlithgow for a while, it was late in the 2011 when I last fished there, the weather had been mostly rubbish and the water was literally green with an algae bloom that turned your flies to green sludge with an embedded hook. However once you located fish, it fished well enough and I had a good day all things considered. Hopefully though this time the conditions might be better.
As we got our boats I could see the water was very coloured up, I reckon there was no more than 2-3 feet visibility judging by when I lost sight of even very bright flies.
There were loads of Buzzer shucks near the mooring pontoons so I made my mind up this would be the main thrust of my tactics. It was reasonably fair at the start with a westerly breeze and a bit of a wave. I set up with a sink tip and three buzzers, mostly black and green variants.
I started over the opposite side from the lodge near the far bank and fished down a reasonable distance but had nothing. Then down by the island, again nothing. I decided maybe I was fishing too shallow so changed to a slow intermediate line,
Nothing.
Then a change to a Di5, a booby on point and a couple of buzzers on droppers so giving me depth but keeping the flies off the bottom.
Persisting down and blowing hard. Was glad for my EWS2 jacket.
Nothing. by now about an hour and a half in it had got fairly blustery and the rain had started.
I decided to move up the loch to the West end and try there. A few changes of flies both boobies and buzzers with a few others thrown in ( Cormorants and Diawl Bachs ). Still nothing.
Then I thought maybe a floater with buzzers under a bung. Nothing. I had seen one fish caught and was aware of a couple of others being caught amongst our club anglers.
I fished the margins, I fished the deeps I fished everything in between. I tried Buzzers, Boobies, Blobs, Lures, Wets, everything but dries ( as I never seen a single fish move all day. Later in the afternoon I seen one boat net 2-3 fish in front of me and I had one tug on a Humungous fishing very deep on a standard sinking line. It never came again despite me repeating the count to the target depth a few more times.
It rained, it blew and it was sometimes a bit cold on the hands.
Nothing.
Post Script: There were fish caught this afternoon in fact a couple of anglers bagged up amongst those who were on the water. There were a good few blanks too. Everyoe said it was hard. Most fish were taken I believe on buzzers/ boobies though I did hear late on that some guys were catching on long Rabbit type lures. I did see some anglers doing roly Poly retreives and suspected it was some kind of lure or Blob pulling going on. Not really something I can be much bothered with.
