If you read this blog at all regularly or indeed you find yourself browsing through the tales of my angling trips you may have stumbled over the story of when I went up the wee burn, and lost the fly that was catching me the fish on a strategically placed bush on the other side of the stream. Not having waders on I could not recover it but on a later trip I went back, got said fly and continued to catch on it.
A sort of similar thing happened today.
I went up to Pendreich for the afternoon and it being very quite, looking a bit dour it has to be said and the wind being very changeable and gusty, I decided to take out the boat. I tackled up with a rod set up for dry flies ( the Streamflex XF2 plus) and the other for nymphing- the HM3 with three buggy patterns on a sink tip line.
Just as I was about to start fishing I noticed a fly jammed down the crack in the seat on the boat, It was well wedged in but I managed to lever it out and it was one of my brown pheasant tail Klinkhammer patterns! No idea how it got here, or indeed how long- I have given a few to people who have been struggling on days past, or it might be one I dropped on a previous boat trip- no idea but though it was a bit squashed, I managed to bush out the hackle a bit and decided it was going on the top dropper of my dry cast with the LTD Sedge on point.
But nothing was rising, and the decision was made to start with the nymphs. No sooner had I made the decision and started to sort the line out than a fish moved nearby between the boat and the North bank. I cast over the top- in fact, I felt I cast a bit too far beyond the right point but retrieved back figure of eight style and there was a swirl at the surface. I felt nothing but lifted as it was in the area of my flies and indeed I was hooked into a cracking wee Brown Trout of about three-quarters of a pound who put up a very decent account of itself before coming to the net. Very neatly hooked in the scissors with a Black Diawl Bach, it came out easily and the fish was returned swimming away strongly! What a start!
A Pendreich trout with the Black Diawl Bach
I could have stopped and gone home happy at this point as the next few hours, passed quickly but without a solitary show of interest to anything I used, dries or nymphs, drifting or anchored. The odd fish moved but I never got a touch.
I had about an hour left and decided the area I had seen most movement was nearer the South bank but due to the ever-changing wind it wasn’t fishable from the boat. Mostly the wind was coming from the South West but it was swirling wickedly and twice I caught myself with the flies in the air as the wind snapped them into a different plane from my cast line. Luckily without injury- only hooked clothing!
Having put the boat away I moved along the dam wall to fish the South bank. As I walked a rise of fish started well out from the wall and they just rose and rose. I am not entirely sure what they were taking, I noticed a lot of sedges around but the fish did not seem to be taking directly off the surface, it looked like emergers subsurface. I decided to try a sedge though on the HM3 with my Airflo 40+ line on to try get out to where the fish were- there was a “seam” of wind-broken water about 25 yards out from the dam and the rises were mostly there. No reaction to the Sedge. I changed it for the recovered Klinkhammer and tried again. I cast it out and left it, fish rose all around then a swirl and a fish was on! Another one of around three quarters of a pound.
I tried for one more and missed a total sitter- dunno what I was doing, but missed it by about 2 minutes!
If I had fished on I am pretty sure I would have got more, the recovered Klink was just the job. Never leave a man behind!
