Yin and Yang, Black and White, Forwards and Backwards, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. There has been a fair bit discussion in the fishing mags ( what little of them I bother to read these days) and in the online fishing media about Trout or fish attractants. An interesting video was posted by Fishing Britain a few months back showing a pair of static blobs one  treated with a fish attractant, the other not and left in the gin clear water of a fishery. I won’t go into the detail of that, its not really the point I guess, but to say where there is a fish attractant there too must be a trout repellant, and clearly I have found it! Eureka…. now I just need to work out exactly what it is!

I went to Harviestoun fishery on Sunday evening. It had been a beautiful day and not having been out all weekend, or indeed the rest of the week, I felt I needed to get out. I wasn’t hopeful of the prospects entirely, warm bright days aren’t generally that successful, but there was a bit of a breeze and I hoped as the sun set it might get a few fish moving, something to target at least eh?

Boy was I disappointed! I arrived around half 6 and was fortunate just to catch Dougie the owner leaving for his tea as I arrived. He quickly got me a ticket , told me to fish to half ten  if I wanted, and said the fly catching most was a size ten Buzzer called “the Pin”. He couldn’t show me one, but to be honest there are only so many colours of buzzer eh? And Size 10 is pretty big, here’s me been tying lots of tiny 16s and 18s of late! But I have hundreds of buzzers, couldn’t be that hard to find something similar?

There are allegedly a couple of deep holes at either end of the water but the stiff breeze blowing from the west was pretty much limiting where you could cast reasonably without getting slapped in the side of the face by a team of three buzzers. I started in the shadier area near the lodge and never had a touch. The water was literally gin clear, I could see where the fish weren’t that was for sure. After a fruitless 30 mins and a number of fly changes I decided to move down the other end, the wind though was worse here.

Another hour or so I never seen or touched a fish despite another handful of flies and covering all the available water in front of me- and to the sides. I had the fishery to myself so finding somewhere to fish from wasn’t a problem. By more than half way through my session I was feeling a little jaded. The water was alive with sedge, there were thousands of them, if only a fish would show an interest. Despite the lack of obvious movement I tied on a couple of dries just to see if it could lure anything up from the depths. Nope. To cut a long and tedious story short, in 4 hours I neither seen or came close to hooking a fish. Not one. I did see a couple of small wild ( I expect brownies) jump, but even they weren’t interested. Home I came I have to say somewhat despondent, it really was the most tedious fishing session I can remember for a very long time. You can get frustrated not catching especially when a few fish are to be seen but you aren’t getting them, but this really was the pits. Clearly the fish are in there somewhere, the clarity of the water is nothing short of exceptional and the insect life abundant, it just wasn’t happening for me.

So onto last night. I decided to take a run up to Pendreich not having been up there this last wee while. its been diabolical for me up there this year. I have turned fish, hooked fish then lost them, had a total lack of any interest and have risen loads of fish only for them not to take the fly or whatever. Was tonight going to be different. The big surprise as I arrived was the wind- there was a pretty stiff easterly blowing in, never a good direction for fishing, though it was far from cold. I decided to fish my 4 weight rod from the north bank, I would have the wind on my better shoulder and I am feeling a bit sore just now so lighter is better. I spoke to an angler as I headed to my spot, and he told me he had had one fish early on , on a Yellow Owl, so that was promising. There were fish moving right out in the middle of the loch but not much near the bank that I could see.

I tied on a deer hair sedge as a starter for ten and cast out. As I retrieved the fly through the fairly brisk “chop” a fish rose maybe 8 feet from the bank between me and my fly, it caught my attention for a second. A second is enough for a fish to take and reject your fly, and that’s what happened, as I looked back at the fly it was to see the swirly of a retreating fish. Missed!

Nothing else came for the sedge, or the yellow owl I next tried. A young lad was about 20 yards to my left and I heard the splash of a fish, he had managed to snare one on a red buzzer under an indicator. Never a successful method for me up there and not one I would try with the 4 weight.

I did though tie on a experimental buzzer I tied a number of earlier this year, one designed to hang at nose height in front of  fish cruising just sub surface. My first cast and a fish came and looked at it, the nervous water round the fly was evident but it thought better of it and retreated.

I carried on for a while and tried a few other buzzers but nothing more. There were tons of sedge on the water by now, a few fish were rising and jumping out in the middle, and with the sun dropping the wind too dropped. I changed over to another sedge, a Bubble wing CDC, it has to be the fishiest looking fly there is I cast it out, it presents beautifully this one and  within a few casts there was a huge gaping chasm opened beneath the fly, a fish was about to take, there was a wet plop and it was gone, it never touched it! Clearly something I have on my flies is repelling the fish a treat! I was massively frustrated but fished on into the dusk but the loch fell silent and I ended up trudging ( well more hobbling , my feet are killing me right now) back to the car, yet another blank.