Another fellow fishing blogger, Mark, who writes the Antermony Rise blog got in touch and invited me for a few hours boat fishing on the Antermony loch, another new location for me. However circumstances went against us and it transpired there was a club competition being held there today ( Sunday)  and so we had to have a hasty change of plan. The forecast was for windy conditions and we needed to find somewhere we could fish from a boat in relatively sheltered conditions so we settled on Swanswater as being easy reach for us both and having boats available for a 4 hour session.
It was pretty quiet when we met in the car park and the water was fairly coloured up. Maybe not a bad as I feared but still pretty murky.
As we made our way to the boat one bank angler had just pulled in a fairly decent Rainbow caught on that Swanswater favourite the Yellow Dancer. It was a fish I would reckon of about 3lbs. Promising maybe.
We took the boat up to the mooring buoy nearest the dam wall and started to fish. I started with a floating line and a mix of nymphs and buzzers straight lining on a leader about 12 feet in length. As I broke my HM3 the other day I was using my sons 9ft 6″ 6/7# Lureflash Viper rod. This is a cheapie ‘kit’ rod but I have to say casts pretty well though its a bit heavy for me.

Mark fishes from the boat

Blogger of the Antermony Rise website, and fan of something called “Cricket”.

Mark was using a very nicely balanced Hardy Demon 7 weight outfit that I had a shot with later, and was incredibly light. I think he was on something similar fly wise but used an intermediate line from the off.

We never seen a fish move or had so much as a knock for the first couple of hours, though we set the world to rights and  resolved most issues, to do with fisheries, pensions, jobs, health, work and life generally- so the government and UN can thank us later for our commitment.

The boat was moved in that time and I changed to an intermediate line myself as we had not seen a single fish move all morning. One angler we seen, took a trout just off the corner of the island in all that time.

We were close to deciding to head ashore and maybe fish the small ponds but decided to give the buoy near the bridge to the island a try just in case. Not long after we tied off there we did see a couple of fish move- one right out in the middle too far to cast to, the other behind us right into the wind. It wasn’t far but the wind was just too strong to get any sort of half decent presentation. I was on a short leader with a FAB on, by this time and I think Mark had a blob and a small lure or something similar.

I did swap to a Pearly Cormorant and might have turned a fish, certainly there was a surface swirl in the vicinity of my fly on one cast but I never contacted the fish and it never came for another go. By now the weather had brightened up- and was starting to get quite warm though the wind seemed to follow us up the loch, and went from strong and gusty to strengthening and any sort of cast behind to where most fish seemed to show, was near impossible.

With about an hour or so left we decided to step ashore and try our luck on foot. We headed round to the back of the island to ‘Nan’s peg’, in front of the shelter, and had a go there, Mark was nearer to the shady tree line than me, so I tried to see if I could lure out any fish from under the large rafts of lilly pads. Again nothing showed and the heat was definitely rising. The water looked a bit clearer round here to my view, surprising maybe as you are in front of the inflow from the Sauchie Burn. Our 4 hours was near enough up and while it wasn’t productive in terms of fish caught, the undoubted improvements in world peace, and social benefits will be felt by all for some time to come, so it was a worthy way to spend a few hours on a Sunday morning.

I headed home to rest- think I have over done it a bit over the last few days and am feeling quite sore, Mark headed off to have a Sunday lunch and watch something called ‘Test Match Cricket’, where twenty-two grown men apparently spend weeks scowling at each other over tea and fondant fancies for some old pot filled with bits of a melted down cricket raquet…………….. or something.