Father’s Day is here again and this year we did it in some style! My son was fortunate enough to get a clay pigeon shooting experience as a present at Christmas from his girlfriend and I was surprised but chuffed when he asked me to go along with him. I assumed he would take a mate. So some Shooting and Fishing was lined up.
I have done a bit rifle shooting in the past ( a long time ago) when I was a part-time soldier and was OK with a rifle. No crack shot but I could get a reasonable grouping out to 300mtrs. I had tried shotguns a few years ago at a work event and was fairly average at it, a trait I managed to keep up successfully today!
I do find when you are being instructed while shooting, that it is hard to concentrate on the target while someone is “guiding you”. I think my brain works better with prior and post instructions than it does while I am actively doing a thing.
Nonetheless, I hit a fair few clays but wasn’t as good as James who easily outshot me, at his first time behind a real weapon.
We shot with Clay Pigeon Scotland near the village here in Cambusbarron and it was a pleasant hour that if you fancied I would recommend.
After getting my butt kicked (shot!) we headed over to Cloybank. A nice small water for my son as he isn’t a regular angler and also because it has a cafe where we could get breakfast before fishing!
Once fed and watered we tackled up though it came on very heavy rain which delayed proceedings. There were numerous fish rising, as they did throughout the day but it really was far from easy.
We had been told by the owner that dries were the way to go, and you would have established that with the amount of fish rising anyway, but trying to find a pattern they would take was difficult. They wouldn’t look at an emerger and I couldn’t get them to take a buzzer, or even small F flies . I tried James with a split wing pattern and at this point James came closest to catching, but the fish were refusing at the last second consistently.
Having tried a wee lure and a few subsurface patterns ( just in case, I too dropped onto the split wing patterns but I scaled down my tippet from 6lb to 4lb. I was taking a wee bit of a chance as on a 6#rod there isnt a lot of protection for such fine leader.
Almost right away I had a take, and after a very carefully managed fight netted a strong fish of about two and a half pounds or so. Next cast I had a refusal then next again a second fish. A bit bigger this time.
I scaled down James tippet to 4lb too and he was still getting offers but no clear takes. One observation was that when the fish took it was very very subtle, The second was so slight I almost missed it entirely, the take was hardly visible. The same with number three that came soon after.
I think James was getting a bit fed up netting my fish by this point with no luck himself so I spent a fair time trying things with him including changing ponds but he just wasn’t getting the takes for no reason I could discern. Another angler had been there all day and told us he hadn’t caught anything. Like James was experiencing they were refusing. I told him I caught once on 4lb but he said he was sticking with 8lb. You can only lead a dog to water…as they say.
After more heavy showers we returned to the pond we started on and I eventually secured number 4, another barely visible take and then hurrah, James got one on too, and did a great job of getting it in on the 4lb tippet.
Right before we left I managed a fifth, a funny one where a fish was cruising towards my fly though I was already pretty sure it was going to ignore it. Right behind came a blue trout and it clearly saw the fly and decided I am having that before the other fish. It darted right by and grabbed the fly off the top then took off across the pond like an express train, it stripped a good seven or eight metres of line off the reel right off the bat and took a lot of persuading to come in, only a blue of about two and a half pounds though it fought like twice that.
So honours shared on the day, James won the shooting, and me the fishing and everyone was happy.
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