Having had longish drives to get to rivers, then not actually had any fish to show for it, I felt an excursion to a local trout fishery was in order to hopefully redress the balance in terms of fish caught per hour spent on the pursuit of said quarry! My fishing sessions have been lengthening recently. I have a mental tally I refer to as my fishing index that equates the current state of my arthritic issues with hours spent fishing. For a good while towards the back end of last year and towards the end of January I was stuck between zero and two. Of late I am getting to a four with a push towards a five. In this regard it stands to reason that my treatment while not having earth shattering results, is starting to have some positive effect and I seem able to tolerate longer sessions with a reasonable amount of time on my feet.

So I trotted (limped?) off to Orchill on what was a bright sunny lunchtime but the sky greyed a bit as I neared my destination and to be frank it was pretty cool and breezy up there. It was also packed, especially the far bank with the wind behind, great for the fishery, not so good for the fishing one would suspect. I got geared up ( discovered I had forgot my camera) and took 4 hours catch and release, and headed up the near bank facing into the wind, though thankfully the wind had a slight left to right skew to it so it wasn’t too bad to cast across. I started on an intermediate line with a tw0 fly set up on a 16 foot leader of 10lb to the top dropper and 8lb to the point. A bit heavier than I usually fish but on C&R I want to be able to bully the fish in and get them back quick to minimise stress.

I tend to think that where fisheries give us the option of Catch and Release we owe it to them as angler to look after their fish and minimise netting and handling as much as possible. If I can get away without netting them and simply unhook them I will, but that isn’t always possible depending on the position being fished from or the resistance of the fish.

Top end of Orchil

The phrase Shooting fish in a Barrel is often heard. Today, this was the barrel.

I started with a mobile bloodworm pattern on point and a  small black cruncher on a dropper, and was letting the whole lot sink. Elizabeth the fishery owner was saying since the loch had frozen over during the week that the fish were apparently right down on the bottom. Nothing happened for my first 20 minutes and but for one fish caught by an angler along the bank from me I never saw anything else taken. I moved down to near the island and had a go there. Still nothing so a change of tactics. I popped on a small hothead damsel on point and a Millenium bug on dropper, first cast I had “something”. It was an odd sort of take, the fish took one of the flies and felt like it was pulling away with it, as I tightened in it pulled back fairly robustly, it definitely wasn’t a snag, and then as hard as it puled it let go. I figure it had the fly in its mouth but wasnt hooked and simply let the fly go once it felt the stiff resistance. Oh well, promising. Out on the watehr though there were definite signs of fish in the upper layers, fish were rising quite regularly and in fact some were chasing along the surface in a frenzied sort of manner as if chasing fry. I don’t know what the fry might be, maybe young trout from the burn? I have heard Elizabeth say ( last year) that the Rainbows often hoover up the young wild fish that enter the pond and can only assume its something like this. There was also signs of the odd midge here and there coming off the top too and where the fish weren’t chasing they were sipping down something. Worth a dry? I swapped to a floating line and put a reasonable sized hopper on point with the cruncher suspended just below the surface on the dropper. Not so much to get attention on the dry as to hopeully get the dropper fly taken. The tactic fished OK but I never got a look when I cast over rising fish. Maybe the leader was too heavy? I swapped to a small black shuttlecock on point. Unfortunatley you do tend to focus on the dry fly when you fish like this and during one cast I was a bit lax in tightening in my slack line and realised ( too late) that the line was moving off but the dry wasn’t. Something had the dropper, I was a year too late lifting and missed it! Still encouraging. The fishery was by now quietening down, the morning anglers packing up an leaving so I moved up to the end of the loch, a favourite area of mine though one many anglers seem to ignore. I hit jackpot!

Fish were moving a lot down here and thoughI never got a sniff with the dry on I figured they were only a few feet under the surface. I tried small and black Diawl Bachs, one a flashback one not. First cast, I had a take but it never stuck. Check the hook, all OK cast out, and slow retreive back. As soon as I varied the speed, either slow to fast or fast to slow- fish! I had 6 in fairly rapid succession and a few other pulls all in the space of less than an hour. The biggest was about 3 lbs the smallest about one and three quarters, but pristine bars of silver with the pink midline. All fought like tigers ( the four-legged variety!).

I had a few flies destroyed by the sport so did have to stop and freshen my cast a few times, but the flashback was winning hands down and I by now had two on. Things did quieten down and I varied flies, staying small, keeping a bit of flash in the mix and managed to eek another three out, one on a pretty small pearly cormorant, one on a viva spider ( only a size 16) and one on a shiny epoxy buzzer. Great sport. Two sort of came off as I was trying to get the fish into a position for unhooking, where I would have ordinarily netted them long before so by “international rules” they got away but I am counting them on fish welfare grounds! I netted a couple that simply weren’t going to stop wriggling to let me unhook them.

My last fish snapped the leader as I went to unhook it and was away – the leader had had a battering by now so I called it a day and headed off home very pleased with my sport.