I headed out up to Loch Coulter the other night there and it was the most bizarre/unusual conditions. You know when you see photos or video of the African or South American rainforest and the clouds seem to rise from the tree canopy?…well looking around the local countryside around the southside of Stirling and where I live, was like that. Except where in the Amazon or the jungles of Cameroon, it’s caused by heat and moisture literally evaporating from the undergrowth and condensing into clouds, here, it wasn’t even particularly warm.
And you wouldn’t have called it humid on any level either.
Yet here were hazy clouds seemingly emanating from stands of trees or any higher ground. You can see the radio sites on Earls Hill from up by Coulter and they were clad in cloud that came and went through the evening.
Evidently then we had plumes of very low cloud spilling across the land and at times it was low enough to touch the trees. It was very odd though.
As I was tackling up in a very busy car parking area at Coulter ( though I could only see two anglers on the far bank and one boat visibly out), an angler, a young man up with his father, came by asking if I was just arriving or leaving. He had been on a few hours and at that stage had caught two fish, but said it was very hard going. He said around half five in the evening there had been a sudden burst of activity and the fish were jumping or topping, out in the bay opposite the boat house and he reckoned there had to be 100 fish all milling about. Yet, he said, you couldn’t touch one. He said he had tried dries around them but got nothing. Having said that he had managed another two fish on dries but away from this sudden burst of activity.
For my part, I think I spied maybe 4 or 5 fish leap the whole time I was there. You can probably count another couple where I heard the fish splash but didn’t see them. Jumping fish in my experience tells you little except that you now know there is ( or was) a fish in the vicinity of where the disturbance was spotted.
I had one “tug” that might actually have been my point fly snagging the bottom or a bit of weed. Certainly, it felt a bit like a hard knock but I couldn’t be 100% sure. And I hooked a few wee Perch….as you are apt to do at this time of year. The fish that were jumping were out at least twice my maximum casting range and frankly i am probably flattering myself at that, call it three times normal casting range, out by the boat moorings in the bay. Well beyond where I could reach even wading to waist deep in the water.
But to be honest at this time of year you typically get a few fish moving in an evening and see insects, Caenis are what you don’t want to see and looking at my car as I left,they were definitely around, but the wind was keeping them at bay. But often the odd Olive or Sedge will be evident and I saw nothing, but it motivates you to keep plugging away. There were no motivating factors tonight. I do think I have learned that unlike Pendreich where I used to fish a lot late into the evening- I wonder if it is still going?- the Coulter is more a mornings loch than evenings. Yes I have caught at all times of day but, I can’t help thinking mornings are more productive.
I fished a few teams of wets, buzzer patterns and dries in what seemed to be pretty ideal fishing conditions, there was a slight breeze, it wasn’t excessively warm, and it definitely wasn’t too bright. In fact I needed to remove my Polaroids a few times as it was so dark with the clouds scudding by overhead that I really couldn’t see my flies. The lad I spoke to earlier caught one more on a dry before he left, his father who he was with and I understand fishing the same patterns had nothing…. Either you are lucky enough to put the fly in front of a curious fish or you aren’t. Today, like the lads father, I wasn’t.
