I never touched a fishing rod over the weekend, with stuff going on at home and just never had the time at all. There have though been some pretty heavy downpours of rain and it’s not like we didn’t need it, especially up at Pendreich which is still recovering from the over-running, over winter maintenance work that seen it drained down to probably no more than one-third of normal capacity.
I have been up there a few times to check on the water levels for the club but haven’t fished it at all this season. I was champing at the bit to get out though after all the domestic chores so after work I made haste with my tea and got out to enjoy the longer evenings while the sun was shining. It was a little breezy though and I was a little concerned the wind might be bad up on the hill. It wasn’t as bad as I feared, though it was coming in more or less in an easterly direction which is never great. I also did a stupid thing, in putting my old waders in the car ( I don’t want my good ones getting all mud if the water was still low) and rather cleverly forgot to put my boots in the car as well . Doh.
Forgetful
Having decided I would just have to chance it I made my way with my rod set up with a slow intermediate line and three fly cast, to the North Bank where I could cast across the prevailing wind. The exposed margins were much drier than I anticipated and being bereft of waders proved not really to be much of an issue. It is still a bit annoying picking up grit off the fly line coiling at your feet though, waders or no waders.
My first ten-fifteen minutes of thrashing, went unanswered and I was seeing no signs of life, when the wind dropped a little and the sun peeked out from between the clouds, and suddenly there was movement…..and then, once again. My plan had originally been to work my way round searching out the fish as much as I could but on seeing activity I decided time was too short still at this point in the season to waste working my way round to them and I just took the direct route.
This proved a wise move. My second cast to the area where I had spotted a rising fish, was answered immediately by a Brown of getting on for a pound and a half, which took a pearly Snatcher on the top dropper. The next 10 minutes were a bit manic. While I was playing this fish I noticed a few more move in the same general area. My next 15-20 casts were all answered by pulls, tugs, bow waves following, swirls and a couple of short sharp hookups that then suddenly went slack.
While in one regard it was frustrating, in actuality it was great fun! I swapped a few flies, in fact I was keen to as I wanted to experiment a bit but as soon as the sun went behind the clouds, that wind reappeared and it all went very dead very quickly.
I tried swapping from the slow Intermediate to a floater as I noticed most of the activity seemed to be when the flies landed near the fish rather than on the retrieve subsurface. This had little effect initially as the fish had literally switched off. I had gone from some sort of activity every cast to nothing.
While I was changing my set up I was talking to a photographer who was on patrol waiting on the Osprey, but it didn’t make an appearance. It filled the time waiting on the activity to resume.
As soon as the sun reappeared, the wind dropped and it did, it was also quite apparent there was a fair amount of fly life about, both small midges, and bigger upwinged flies. The fish, though right under the surface, didn’t appear to be taking off the surface- I did try a dry and got not so much as a sniff.
I did though move along the bank a bit to let me reach another area I was seeing movement, and did manage to tempt a second fish to take a mini lure tied in the fashion of the gold damsel/Christmas tree decoration, just much smaller, to comply with the fly gauge rules up at the loch. What an effective material and fly style this is.
As the sun set things initially died off then suddenly with only the blue dusk remaining and a few flecks of red left in the sky things exploded into life once more and I was getting lots of follows and nips once again though no solid hook ups. It was however a lot of fun and a productive hour and a half’s fishing.
