Orchill – fish to be caught

When I have been fishing I suspect I am not unlike a lot of anglers when  asked how my fishing went. I have a sort of mental scoring system that allows me to rate the fishing. Now I hasten to add it’s not a rating of how much I enjoyed the day or the company or other less quantifiable factors. Indeed I have had days out fishing from morning to night where I never touched a fish but just being out and in the surroundings or with the company, made it a memorable and thoroughly enjoyable day.  On the flip side I had a few days I would have to say didn’t set the heather alight in the memorable stakes, but I did Ok in catching fish.

So it goes like this:

1 fish : Not a blank ( all trips are worth going if I caught one fish)

2 fish : A Successful day ( Getting 2 seems to prove the first wasn’t a fluke!)

3 fish or more: Excellent

You do of course get the odd exceptional day when you can’t seem to put a foot wrong and just seem to be tuned into what the fish want, and get a total buzz. Equally, there are days when reading it is just so tough and every or any fish is heard earned. Getting one seems like an achievement. Today I managed in the end to get three, but I tell you, I think they had had a long Samaritans session before opening time, cos suicidal they were not! On days like today the end result does not really convey the effort expended to get the quarry in the net.

The fish were there right in front of you , all you had to do was catch them but they just weren’t interested in anything artificial, at least not the moving fish.

A trout rises obligingly in the warm late autumn. early winter sun.

The venue was Orchill, a small still water that has to be one of the prettiest fisheries anywhere. Having this and Swanswater on your doorstep makes me very lucky in always having nice surroundings to wet a line. Orchil being up in the hills behind Braco, though can be a bit more exposed and on a windy day it can be hard work, and in winter the temperatures are a fair bit lower than at sea level. Elizabeth, the lady who runs it was telling me it was -6C last weekend and -3C during this week, resulting in the water being frozen over, today though I arrived about 12 mid-day and the sun was shining and there wasn’t a breath of wind. The fish were moving too, judging by the expanding swirls all over the water. The fishery was also busy, there were quite a lot of anglers out to enjoy the conditions. As I tackled up a couple who I have seen there a number of times, I reckon a husband and wife, were just coming off the water. I was asking them how it was. Hard going they said. He had 4, she had 3 but they were all being taken deep. There were fish moving right out in the middle beyond reasonable casting range, but they said, even though the boats were out and you would expect them to be slaying the fish, they weren’t. They said most people were struggling but buzzers under bungs seemed to be doing best. The chap was saying he had been there the day before and said hot head damsels were doing the business but not today.

I decided to go up the top end, I alway like it there on a cold day as the springs under the loch bed keep the water at a stable temperature and usually means there are always fish to be found. No one was there. But fish were, there were fish rising all the way up the far bank. I started with three buzzers, one which was a sort of experimental style, an idea I had from my last outing at Swanswater. I might elaborate another time if I see any success with this. Its not entirely unique but not something I have seen in a shop for instance. My first hour was largely fruitless, and I made several changes and but for getting a swirl at my top dropper while I was distracted, talking to a chap laying mole traps behind me, I never had a touch. I then swapped to an intermediate line, with a cats whiskers on point, a flashback Diawl Bach on middle and a Bibio Snatcher on top dropper. First cast letting the line sink, about half way in on the retreive, I thought I had snagged weed but the weed then “head shook” and I was into my first fish. It was such a gentle take I thought it couldn’t be well hooked, but in fact the barbless fly was a twat to get out the fish’s mouth as it was snagged right over the fish’s teeth. I got it out with forceps but at the expense of wrecking the fly in the process. The fish of about 2 lbs swum off and I decided that I had spent long enough here, and would move elsewhere. This was frustrating fishing though, the fish were there but the ones moving did not seem to be interested in the flies and it appeared to get a fish to take you needed to be deeper.

The temptation to fish shallow and cover the moving fish though is hard to resist. I moved round to beside the inlet of the burn. There was hardly a soul about by now and it was about two thirty, but the sun was still shining though low in the sky and it wasn’t cold.

I started here with the same team of flies but the fish were miles out and it was hard to know what to do for the best. With the intermediate line on, I  was just about reaching the fish but then needed to wait to let the flies sink and I felt the files weren’t really fishing well in the vicinity of the fish, which kind of defeats the purpose. After another move further down the bank over the burn to try get nearer some of the fish and a further fly change, I was at a bit of a loss what to do. I wasn’t sure what the fish were taking, they were rising like a summers evening but I never seen anything visible on the water to offer a clue. If it was tiny midges, to fish a dry that small would need a very fine tippet and all you succeed in doing is getting broken off. Nope there needed to be another way. I spotted a few minnows in the margins at my feet and earlier I had suspected that little fish might be the quarry but a pattern I find works well for such fish, a flash back Diawl Bach got nothing. I opted for  floating fry  on point with a buzzer and a tiny nymph on the droppers. Still nothing and still not satisfied with the sink rate I opted for  something I rarely use in small stillwaters. A sinking line went on.

A bit of a greedy one, one fly wasn’t enough for this fish and it had both the middle dropper and point fly hooked in its mouth. A fish of around 3lb I would guess.

A few casts got nothing, but then a fish moved near me in the margins to my right. I covered it and about half way in on a slow figure of eight retrieve, the line was ripped from my hand and the rod almost followed. I can honestly  say I have never had a take like this ever. I would have sworn this was a fish about 5-6 pounds and it was heading for the horizon like a steam train. Having had the line ripped from my grasp if it had turned toward me it would no doubt get off but fortunately it was heading out and was only succeeding in keeping itself hooked while I tried to get hold of the line and get some control back. I t had all the slack and was now taking line from the reel before it stopped, and I then had to take in line quickly as it came towards me and headed for the margins. Worried about snags I stripped line in quickly to keep the tension on the barbless hooks and eventually gained enough time to get the slack onto the reel. Once it was on the reel I was able to get it into the net, countering its runs with the drag on the reel. As I got it to the net I was amazed to realise it really wasn’t that big a fish. Maybe about 3lbs, maybe a tad over though not a long fish. But it was a greedy fish as it was hooked inside the mouth on both the floating fry AND the buzzer on middle dropper. Not sure what had happened there but I think it had taken the buzzer on middle and then lunged at the fry on point  – and suspect thats maybe why the take was so hard.

It was starting to get cold now and the frost was showing on the rod, and in addition the fish were not rising so frequently. Not to worry, we were fishing deep. I fired out another few casts and a few minutes later had number three. The take was fairly brisk but the fish was much smaller and never took much to subdue on the buzzer. For once this fish was easy to get unhooked! By now I had about 20 mins left to me, but to be honest I was feeling a bit sore so decided to call it a day. However I have to say that getting three fish felt like some sort of epic victory as I really had to work for them today.

A closing rant: Smoking and fishing

The waste of a selfish angler, something that gets my goat.

Just a final thing- I have to have a bit of a moan. Smoking and fishing…… what is wrong with some anglers? I am a non-smoker, but if other anglers want to fill their lungs with carcenogens for recreation then thats fine by me, just don’t pollute my “world” with it.  Smoke and fish by all means, as long as you aren’t smoking in my space, I really don’t care. But what I find totally inexcusable is what some then do with the used fag butts. At Orchil they supply bins at each peg, so there is no excuse not to put the used fag butt in the bin. If there was no bin I personally would like to think a responsible smoker would stub out his fag and put in in a wee bag and bin it later or make their way to a nearby bin and dispose of it- lets be fair 10 yards is about as far as you can ever be from a bin. It’s not that much to ask is it? So why do they throw their fag butts in the water? Some people want to eat the fish,  and they seem to think its Ok to put their fag butts where the fish, or indeed the water fowl or other creatures could be exposed to their waste and poisons. The fish might take the fag butts and then some poor sod is going to eat that fish laced now as it is with nicotene, and other undesireable chemicals. At the last peg I fished there were no less than five fag butts in the water, all the same type so presumably thrown there by the same angler. They were’t even fully smoked so he/she clearly has money to burn ( as if we didn’t know that already anyway). I took this picture, I couldn’t get all five in, the shot. The bin was less than 8 feet to the left of these fags, was it really so hard to put them there- you know you are allowed to bring the bin over to where you are standing so you needn’t even move your feet in the act of disposal! It’s not fair either to the owner Elizabeth, who manages the place, she always does her rounds there as most anglers who frequent the water will know, to clear up but what chance has she got with arseholes throwing their fag-ends in the water? It’s not her fault yet it reflects on the fishery. Would you like someone to walk in your house and throw fag ends on your floor then rub the waste in your dinner? No? Didn’t think so.