Yesterday was SCAC’s last “outing ” of the season, the small stillwater bank fishing event that is the Lex McCrindle Memorial Trophy event. It’s really a friendly affair rather than a hard core competition as a last get together of the membership before we batten down the hatches for another winter, and it looks like this winter is going to be a particularly dark and long one.
This years event was at Swanswater and with a field of 24 reduced to 21 by late call offs it was still a pretty well attended event for the club. The plan was to have two laps of the fishery, one morning , one afternoon, using different pegs in each session so all the anglers had the opportunity to fish all areas of the water. Not something that’s really on offer normally unless you are there to fish on an especially quiet day.
As is always the case in these type events, making early fish count is critical as fishing pressure tends to push the fish out of reach to all but the best casters as the day wears on. What makes this particularly apparent at Swanswater is the substantial head of Golden Trout as you can see them right there but trying to reach them is a feat at times.
Even if you manage to get a fly to the fish you still need to entice one into taking it.
This season has also been a bit beset by weed at Swanswater. Personally I put this down to a very clement winter where the weed was not induced to die back by the usual frosts around January and February. If you recall January in particular was very wet with something like a continuous 18 days of rain from New Years day onwards. So it was never that cold. Snow and ice to all intents and purposes never came to the party at all and then we were into a very mild and dry Spring with almost continuous sunshine for 2 months. Alastair and Ian at Swanswater have invested in weed clearing machinery but this needs to be employed on days when there is a little wind to help corral the cuttings into a corner for removal and with the lack of wind there just now any attempt to use it would leave a raft of loose bits on the water surface. We also have autumn upon us and the first few leaves on the water and weed that reaches the surface…. So this makes fishing a little challenging. Precisely what you want for a competition!
Right at the start the fish were on top and rising along the east side and I think most anglers were salivating at the prospect of a good days top of the water sport but the surface activity tended to be short lived and in fitful bursts. But fish were caught early on. I managed one fairly standard but very strong Rainbow on one of my first casts from the corner of the island peg 21. Bill Ramage had two early fish on his first peg that gave him a substantial bag for weigh in, one was a golden trout around seven and three quarter pounds. This big fish was matched on the second stop of the morning rotation by Bob McLean who also had one of similar weight. Speaking for myself I struggled to get much attention from the fish at all. Over the course of the day I had some promising swirls at my flies and a couple of very cautious pulls but that first fish turned out to be my only fish as well.
A couple of pegs to my left, Stevie Plank did far better especially when his draw took him to the peg by the Big Tree on the east bank which proved to be quite a productive peg over the day. Stevie pulled a 4lb Tiger Trout out here as his second fish which was a belter in itself but was maybe unfortunate to get that, as his third fish was off the scale- a huge Brown Trout that was close to double figures. As it wasn’t weighed in I guess we will never know.
The top end of the loch- that’s the pegs that face the Dam Wall along the south side, became known as the bank of despair. I don’t think a single fish was landed thee all day. One angler had a lost fish there first cast and that ended up being the sum total. There were fish in the corner between the bridge and the long platform that sticks out into the water from the wee shelter on the south side but they seemed entirely uninterested in anything that was able to be put near them.
There was a lively patch mid afternoon when a few anglers on the island managed to net quite a few fish and this saved quite a few blanks on the day but the overall haul was not huge with about 16 fish being weighed in and somewhere just over 20 in total being caught.
On my last peg I was sure i was going to get a second fish myself as I was putting my fly right over some very active fish but they would simply come up and look at my offerings disdainfully then swim off. One was a big Golden Trout that would have been up there with the best on the day. Several fly changes made no difference I just could not get them to take it ( even on finer tippet).
In amongst that though were some big fish, Bill and Bob had the two nearly 8lb Golds to weigh in, Stevie Plank returned that huge Brown, Bill Campbell had a big ( 6lb ?) Golden Trout to the net as well. So some quality fish were had and to be fair they made up a significant proportion of the catch on the day. Stevie had 5 fish with Bill Ramage on 4 but Bills heavier weight aided by that big early gold meant he took the honours of both biggest fish and heaviest bag and thus took the trophy home that has been lying in my house this last year.
A good, if hard, day I doubt there will be so many more benign weather days like this to come this year.
