I was planning on a few hours in a boat this afternoon, up at Loch Coulter, provided the wind stayed reasonable, it had been still in the morning but the afternoon started to get increasingly breezy so wasn’t sure how it would be up there.
As I was tying a few flies to replace those lost in action yesterday ( quill flies don’t fare so well with big trout teeth ) I received a message from a mate about fishing and I invited him along as a guest for the afternoon…. a wee change.
He arrived we loaded the gear in my motor and headed to the hills. It was breezy but perfectly fishable and we were lucky as someone was coming in as we tackled up which meant no boat manoeuvring needed. Looking at the book you can see the fishing has been tough of late. The boat that came in had managed 3 fish I think over the morning into early afternoon but they said they had been hard to come by.
And so it was to be.
I was ON FIRE and gave my boat partner a master class in Perch catching
We drifted tight in to the weeds where we could and my pal ( we’ll call him Shrek) hooked into and was broken in a slamming take by something on a wet sedge pattern then while he was repairing his broken leader I hooked into a wee Perch on my point buzzer. I had a Kate McLaren on top dropper and a wee black spider on the middle. There was very little surface activity the entire outing and the best of what action we had was right in the margins ( which was occasionally a bit of a snag-fest).
Not the prettiest angler, Shrek, having come off the set of Lord of the Rings 3, as King of the Orcs managed this one lonely looking Trout . I reckon his filmstar good looks scared the fish away from our boat.
As we drifted up the weedy far side of Burn Bay, my partner hooked in to a fish and was successfully landed, on a dabbler.His looks were clearly scaring the fish off and I started to have second thoughts on if bringing Admiral Shrek was a good idea… “turn us into the wind, in a bit closer, naw oot the weed, we’re drifting off, put us in closer, naw reverse, quick watch where we are going….”
“Drive the fekking boat yersel! yah ugly bassa! “:-)
Over the course of the session I had a couple of pretty firm pulls though failed to connect to them and then I managed a second ( bigger) Perch, as my coarse fish on the fly masterclass continued. Dominic Garnett would be proud! So over the course of the afternoon I had two fish and he had one- technically a fish catching victory to me, a moral one to him! But at least I am better looking.
