I had to get out the house today, the first day I could truely say the weather seemed anything like settled. I could not be bothered heading far though a Grayling fix is really on the cards, its a bummer being so far from any decent rivers at times, so went along to Swanswater expecting it to be coloured up and high with the recent torrential rain and storms. In fact it was as close to gin clear as I have seen it, and really not that high. I suspect some water had been released with the bad weather.
It wasn’t overly busy, though there was a rather irritating and gusty wind getting up now and again and it was obviously influencing where people were fishing. I bumped into a chap, Jim, I see there fairly regularly and have a blether with, so we both headed up to the roadside for a first cast. I was trying a tungsten headed small Cats Whiskers, with a Teal and Blue Wetfly on the dropper above and he was giving a dry fly a wee go, there were a few trout showing just below the surface.
The dries did not seem to be working, but about half a dozen casts in I had a hard pull and I seemed to have a fish on. I struck, lifting, felt the fish head shake and seen it on the surface, it appeared to have the wet fly on the dropper, then the line came pinging back at me in a heap. At first I thought I had lost my fly to a sloppily tied knot, but no, the flies and leader were intact, so not sure what happened, it certainly felt “on”.
Nonetheless, it gave me hope so after untangling my leader I fished on. Jim had changed tactics and soon was into a fish on a “relatively small” gold bodied black Humungous. I had nothing so swapped flies to a heavy copper wire bodied wet fly on point and a bushy Olive Bumble on dropper. I had one knock on this almost right away but Jim was into his second fish on the Humungous- obviously the pattern to be on. He very kindly came over and gave me one, very similar to ones I have of my own but tied with holographic gold fritz for the body. After a few minutes with my existing cast I put Jim’s fly on and fished on. Jim by now was in to number 3 but just shy of the net, what looked to me like a bigger fish, but he says not, was off- not to worry that would ‘ve been him bagged up!
Jim’s Black and Gold Humungous- the killer on the day.
I had one more strong pull but nothing was holding on and by now the wind was more than a little troublesome, we were both regularly tangling in the bankside rushes. Time for a move though this was clearly a hotspot. Over the other side from the roadside there seemed to be less activity and neither of us had a toch. I moved closer to the island in front of the shelter, and Jim moved further round the loch away from me. I then had a cracking colourful Brown Trout (returned) of about half a pound on a Yellow Dancer but nothing else.
And fundamentally thats how it stayed for me for the rest of the afternoon. I put on more imitative nymph patterns, tried a few other lures but never had a touch, even after returning to the roadside hotspot where a few other anglers had one or two more fish. I decided to have a final 45 mins on the wee ponds, and after spotting the odd fish move put on a big bushy Stimulator with a red buzzer below, and other than one fish coming up and refusing at the last minute never had anything else.
A “near” blank, Jim was telling me he hooked and lost three more fish all on the Humungous from just over the bridge to the island. But nice to be out for the first time this year, would still have preferred to have been on the Ladies though!
