About non Summer
Summer this year has singularly failed to show up. Scotland usually has a fairly dry May and June, and July can be a bit wet if past experience is anything to go by. I have 58 years of experience to call upon of which probably 50 could be called valid memories and I am well aware that all summers seemed to be sunny when we were kids…. However, I would stand by my assertion that May and June tend to be the most reliable months for weather. Not the hottest in absolute terms, in fact, it can be a bit nippy especially in the evenings in May, but generally more settled for longer spells.
Not this year, May and June were exceptionally windy keeping temperatures down in day time though I don’t recall any frost’s overnight of significance either which is unusual. And then after one tantalising weekend of (windy) sunshine at the start of June, it has been followed by incredibly unsettled weather. Heavy rain, strong winds, constant showers and cloud bursts and very cool periods, summer has simply failed to show up. I am fed up with it.
We are now into July and the same state of affairs seems set to continue for now. Even the forecasts have frankly been all over the place. When the sun does manage to poke through the blanket of cloud it is actually very hot, but it rarely lasts more than a minute or two before cloud cover prevails, and then there is always that wind…incessantly blowing in wet weather fronts from the west and parking them above us. I understand it’s all because of the jetstream and tropical storms spiralling off from the Caribbean and tropical United States.
A weather aside
Speaking of weather (Monday) it initially looked nice outside today, the sun is shining pretty brightly…so I thought I better nip outside and open the potting shed door else my Tomato plants get cooked; even on a less warm but bright day, it can reach 40C in the shed through the glass. The wind would knock you off your feet! All my plants have literally been flattened by it, it’s blowing an absolute gale….Summer?!
So it was against the backdrop of more unsettled weather that I decided to pay a visit to Burnhouse. Burnhouse is one of those fisheries that I maybe visit a couple of times a season and is a bit of a marmite place for some. It’s not big and has limited features, it is essentially a bit of an oval kind of shape, and I have a few fishing acquaintances that refer to it as a “muddy puddle”. It is true to say it is always a bit coloured up, I don’t think I have ever seen the water in any state approaching clear, primarily I understand due to the water that enters from a burn at one end and this tends to be exacerbated by rainfall, of which there has been plenty this year.
It may clear a little in a dry spell but being small, the water won’t take long to warm up, and that brings its own issues. While the weather has been far from warm the water was not cold and I noticed bales of what I presume are Barley Straw set about the fishery, that’s usually done as a control on Blue/Green Algae which can make an appearance in summer. While it is a wise precaution, with the wind keeping things stirred up and regular cloud bursts I don’t think it’s going to be a factor just yet in 2022!
I have though always found Burnhouse to be a welcoming wee place and Gary who looked after it, was always quick to be offering the angler cups of tea or coffee and a bit of chit-chat. I have noticed in the last six months to a year that the social media of the loch has picked up pace and I suspected that maybe the management of the loch had changed hands and so it appears to be.
When I arrived I was informed of this and to familiarise myself with the rules which may have changed a little from my last visit. What with COVID etc I think the last time I might have fished Burnhouse was when I won the SCAC Competition there in 2019!
The grounds looked a little tidier and more manicured and what’s noticeably improved is the casting platforms which all look to have been updated and modernised. No more snagging lines on chicken wire, all the platforms seem pretty well maintained with a patch of artificial grass at the end of each. It all looks quite smart. I was also told it was now “properly stocked”, whatever that means. I never found it to be a fishery where you would struggle to locate fish if you moved around, and in fact, one rule I quite liked was the two fish and move rule, so if you landed on a hotspot and had a couple of fish, if the water was busy you were supposed to move to another platform and let other anglers have a go. I always felt that seemed fairly equitable. It also seems to be a rule that’s been dropped, to the water’s detriment I feel.
I was also told there were fish to 24lb, now in the loch, that sort of thing doesn’t really bother me personally as a primarily Catch and Release angler, as when fish get to that size they become a bit of a chore to put back and few survive ( especially in warm water in summer). I never really find that you get much more of a fight out of a bigger fish than you would say from a fit 4lb fish which will quite often take you down to the backing. No doubt there is a market for anglers wanting to catch a 20lb farmed Trout, and I get that, but it’s not for me, having them in the water doesn’t dissuade me at all but it’s not a key selling point either.
While I was getting my ticket I could not help notice the number of fish rising in the corner nearest the lodge and as I did, the angler fishing on the large platform hooked into a fish right off the top. So it looked to be dry fly conditions. Excellent.
All these theories proved wrong
Once set up I made my way to the water and decided though there was evidently quite a gusty wind blowing to go to the windward side of the loch and fish into the wind. Yeah, I would not be able to cast as far, but there was no one fishing there at all, (so little fishing pressure) and “food” ie fly life can be carried across nearer the bank there and so you may encounter fish close in and no need to cast far. All these theories proved wrong on the day, I was able to get a reasonable line out taking advantage of the breaks between gusts of wind, and it wasn’t too bad, but I never spotted a single fish rise anywhere near casting distance, all the fish seemed to be moving either in the calm area sheltered by the lodge or on the fringe of it, where the water became a little more broken. In the full-on ripple on my side I encountered no fish life at all. I was just trying a single dry and nothing so much as looked at it.
I stuck this out for maybe 20 minutes before wandering round to the lee shore, and further up the loch to the corner where it narrows. I had heard some of the anglers as I was setting up and it seemed CDC Dries ( Yellow Owls primarily) had been effective in the morning so this was what I had on. I stuck with this for maybe 10 or 15 more minutes but though the odd fish rose in casting range nothing showed interest in this approach, I changed to a green foam-bodied Daddy and first cast a fish rose but never took it, still it was encouraging. It didn’t last though as I had no further offers. I spoke with another angler as he passed me and he was saying he had had 8 fish since 07:30 in the morning ( it was now about 14:30), all on dries, but that it had definitely tailed off and the fish were proving increasingly difficult to tempt.
I decided to swap leader to something a wee bit more substantial than the 5lb tapered dry fly leader I was on, and put on 8lb straight through fluorocarbon with a small lure on point, give that a try for a short time. This I am sure had a few follows, but nothing took it. It was very hard to actually tell as the wind had gotten right up, the temperature really dropped and at times the rain was trying to make an appearance. It was really quite horrible. Trying to see a bulge in the water behind a lure- even supposing you could be totally sure where it was in the conditions was well nigh impossible.
I then tried straight-lining a couple of buzzers, ( I didn’t go to three flies as the wind was so snarly) the one on the point had a small bead on to get some way down. Having tried a couple of variations on this theme I decided to move again, back towards the hut. As the afternoon wore on I realised or at least it seemed like, nearly everyone seemed to be connected in some way to the fishery. There was a family BBQ going and some folk ( not sure if they were management or relatives) playing with a Kite behind me on the slope as well as the odd group walking up and down the path that runs around the loch. Even the guy fishing on the platform in front of the lodge, which was comfortably the “hot spot” of the day, seemed part of this. The one time he left the platform to go to the BBQ to join the other, another guy I think from either this group or the lodge itself, took his place, until he was finished eating and came back to continue.
I can’t say this enamoured me, and frankly, I started feeling a wee bit like an intruder at a family gathering. Add to that at the next peg round from the “busy” platform, for maybe a good hour there was an angler lying sleeping! So even if he wasn’t fishing no one else could fish there either. I was kind of surprised the fishery never told him to go sleep somewhere else?
While all this was all going on though I changed tactics again and for a spell tied a buzzer to hang below a dry fly and eventually this had a good solid pull and I was able to net a typical 2lb Rainbow stockie. So not a blank. There wasn’t a lot getting caught elsewhere other than in front of the lodge, though a few anglers were regularly reporting missing takes or the fish not quite taking the dry fly being offered.
I persisted with the method I was on though at times the weather turned pretty bleak and the fish turned off for spells. I had no more takers for the deeper buzzer and eventually, with fish showing on top again, I returned the dry fly to the point and put a buzzer on the dropper just subsurface.
Not my best angling moment
As I went to lift off after fishing this on one occasion I felt resistance and then I realised I actually had a fish on, At first, I thought it had to be on the buzzer as nothing appeared to rise to the dry but in fact, I had foul hooked a Rainbow around the Adipose fin, either it had turned at the dry fly as I lifted and snagged it or I had just utterly randomly snagged it as I recovered to cast again. Either way, the fish fought like a fish hooked by the wrong end !
It took a fair bit of encouragement to get it to the net. It was easily a three-pound fish and maybe closer to four, as it was very broad across the back. Even though I had a barbless fly it still took a fair bit of effort to extract. There is something particularly tough about a fish’s skin that is hard enough to penetrate but when it is snagged really grips a hook. The fish swam off none the worse for its tribulations though and as I netted it, to me, it counts 🙂 . Maybe not my best fishing moment of all time though.
I fished on until about half-past five and hunger started to make itself known then I headed off leaving the “fishery family” to their social activities. There were certainly plenty fish moving over the course of the day, but it was far from easy and in the weather conditions quite cold at times.
