Saturday maybe wasn’t the best day for a club outing to a new water ( for me/”us”). The booking was made a while back as somewhere different to try by my friend Pete when he was still able to run the outings for the club. Before he passed away Pete asked if I would mind taking the bookings over and I had to ask him where Upper Carriston was as I hadn’t actually heard of it. It transpired it was one of a pair of reservoir fisheries over by Glenrothes in Fife. A little off out normal “beaten track” but I am always up for trying somewhere new (to me). I will by the time you read this hopefully have had time to put together a wee fishery review of the water.
Kenny Nae Mates
I was supposed to have been fishing with four other club members on our outing but I knew as soon as I arrived that something was up as I was the only car in the car park other than the guy who owns the place. Long story short I was the only club member who turned up! Hard to believe in a club with near on 150 members you struggle to get 4 “confirmed” members to turn out let alone get folk to say they will come at all!
Nonetheless, I had not come all this way ( it is a good hours drive for me) not to fish, so having had a chat with the fishery owner ( I think his name is Richard ) and got my gear together I was setting out alone in a boat. It isn’t a big water, at around 20acres and half the “bank” is actually the dam wall. In shape, it seems to be somewhere between square-ish and circular, so it kind of has 4 corners. It is more or less I am told a fairly even 20feet deep or thereabout for the most part but the bottom end which is more natural-looking is where it shallows out and looks to be the most interesting area to fish. As I was starting out there were a couple of other anglers heading out in front of me in another boat and they were planning on fishing dries down towards that bottom end. It seemed like a good plan.
A Windy Day
What was going to scupper any plans and proved to be a bit of a spoiler for the day was the wind. While it was never unfishable, there was a nasty, at times cold, North Westerly wind hammering straight into the loch and looking at it, that is probably the most exposed direction for the wind to blow from. It does appear to be near the top of a hill and so I suspect could be quite a windy spot at times but I am told that due to the local topography there are always sheltered areas to fish. The direction the wind on this day was blowing was largely unobstructed blowing in across Fife and there was a wind turbine not half a mile away that was “birling” around all day going “full-chat”.
Nothing showing
You could get a little respite under the lee of the dam but that wasn’t really a terribly interesting area to fish. But, as in all things, you need to play the hand you are dealt so I headed out to fish the margins from the boat moorings towards the bottom end. It was a little tricky maintaining a drift that would not take you in too close to the side but I managed it a couple of times with no sign of any fish on top at all. My first drift down was fishing a pair of dries; a Daddy longlegs- it is that time of year after all and a black CDC merger. My second drift I tried a wet fly and a wee lure on point- the wee goldie as that always seems to get a reaction if nothing else. Not a touch.
I then moved further out and tried a drift nor or less down the middle to the bottom, and then down the more Northerly dam wall to the margins. The wind was less under the lee of the dam which was a relief and I did see the one and only fish I actually saw move all day just about 30 metres out from what I think was platform 13. My efforts to cover that spot with the two flies and a floating line went unanswered.
Fishing deeper
After a good wee while fishing in the wind, which was coming from an awkward direction at times and did see me clip the back of my head a couple of times with my aerialised flies, I decided to try to get some respite from the wind up near the boom that sits out from the dam wall and to anchor the boat. It was by now getting near lunchtime and I was needing a break. The other two boats out on the loch pretty soon seemed to have similar ideas and seemed to be struggling much as I was. I swapped to a full intermediate line ( stupidly I had again left my bag of different sinking lines in my tackle cupboard at home ( even though when I was packing my gear I did think to myself, “remember your sinking line spools”). What an idiot. At least on a full intermediate line and at anchor I could fish deeper and tried counting down progressively deeper and deeper looking for some sort of reaction. This too got me precisely nothing.
But is it “fly fishing”?
So as I was thinking of opening my sandwiches and having a snack I decided to go over to the dark side…. back on the floating line, fix on a “bung” to my line and initially tied three “buzzers” at 18″, 5 feet and about 10 feet under the bung. I cast out and while I was fishing them ultra-slow, I could at least put the rod down for a second to eat my salad rolls.
I was onto my second roll when the line moved off taking the White Fish Pimp with it and I lifted into what seemed to be a pretty big feeling fish. It made some quite long runs and not until I finally got it to the surface ready for the net did I get a look at it, and it transpired it was a pretty nicely coloured 2lb Rainbow though it did have a strange gill plate on its left side.
It had taken the Olive Spanflex buzzer at about 5 feet down. I carried on with this method, honestly, this isn’t my favourite method as I have said before, in my opinion, is really float fishing with flies, but sometimes the fish want the flies presented statically. Straight lining buzzers in the wind was going to be near on impossible on the drift and I had had no indication the fish wanted anything moving at all. After about another 20 minutes the same thing happened again, the takes were incredibly gentle and honestly but for the bung, I doubt you would have felt them unless very tight to the flies.
Still, getting the sport
As I was bringing this fish in towards the boat to net it, it came off. That was unfortunate but I had a tussle with it first so at least had some sport from the fish. I checked I still had three flies on and cast out. I did make a fatal mistake though of not actually checking the three flies closely and this would prove to be my undoing later. The wind was gradually pushing the boat off the spot I was anchored at and after a while, I was out in the middle of the loch nowhere near where I started. I just let the boat drift until nearing the far side the anchor bit in again and the boat more or less stopped. Eventually, I hooked into another fish same method, same flies and once more as it neared the net, came off. This prompted me to look closer and there right enough I could see that the Okey Dokey I had tied on at the 18″ dropper had an opened up hook gape. Presumably, the second fish had taken this and the third too. The fly was removed and disposed of and replaced with another.
Something of a rare catch
The fishery owner Richard had told me aside from Brown, Rainbow, Blue and Tiger Trout the reservoir also held Perch ( not that unusual) and Roach….very unusual in my experience. He told me they were rarely caught on a fly. I have only ever caught one previously while out on the Lake of Menteith during the Scottish Clubs heat a few years ago when my boat partner and I must have drifted over a school of them and we both landed Roach. When my bung went under again it transpired I had one of these rare little beauties. The Roach is a pretty wee fish with its red eye and tail and after admiring all 7 or 8 inches of the silverfish which had taken the Olive Buzzer, I let it go.
Since I was feeling grubby and soiled- might as well go the whole hog
The wind was still pretty severe and eventually, I decided to try get more shelter from the dam wall near the boat moorings and anchored there for about my last hour. Once more the bung went down and this time I had a Perch which had rather predictably taken the Wotsit I had on point. As I had already “soiled” my fishing reputation fishing a bung I might as well admit to going the whole way and trying the Wotsit and even a Squirmy Wormy under the bung. It was one of those days.
One of the older guys on the boat that had went out in front of me, and told me he only fishes dries, admitted he had caught one fish and dropped another four….. on a “wee boobie”. So it looks like he was casting his reputation to the wind as well today! What can you do when the fish just aren’t playing and the weather isn’t even helping you along?
By the back of three I was feeling a bit tired with fighting the wind and with no sign of anything moving near the surface still, I decided to call it a day. Hard going. The loch was only stocked a couple of days before I arrived and I am told it has had 6 stockings since Lockdown and it appears to be a mostly catch and release water so its not really the lack of fish, it was just poor conditions and they weren’t interested in chasing.
So another day I am sure it would fish better, but I could at least say I had done some sort of Upper Carriston “slam” having had a Trout, a Perch and Roach…. that has to be some sort of achievement!
