The plan hatching in my head Sunday morning was to get out fairly sharp after walking the dog and go somewhere different. However I then realised I had a few other tasks to get around and ended up cutting steel, up to my elbows in manky drain water, and jet washing a roof!

So my window of opporchancity for fishing was severely curtailed and I decided just to head up to Pendreich for a couple of hours. It turned out to be a wise choice as conditions were well nigh perfect, there was a slightly South Easterly breeze blowing on and off, and there was only one other angler. The boat was free so I decided to head out and have a guddle from that, and the fish were rising all over the loch- not full on, but they were near the surface and that’s all the encouragement I need to tie on a dry fly. My starting patterns for today were the LTD Sedge on point and a Brown Klinkhammer on top dropper, all on a fairly long leader.

It proved to be a good choice as within a few minutes I had a fish on the LTD Sedge, a half pound or so, brown trout, and almost next cast- in near the dam wall I had a second, maybe a three-quarter of a pound fish, also on the sedge.

Casting back yet again right in tight to the dam wall I was taken again, I struck and I felt the resistance of a fish which then went slack.

I thought I had simply pulled the hook striking too fast but on the next cast something looked odd- and I recovered my leader and found I had been broken off below the dropper. Not sure if I had got a knot in the line- there was no tell-tale curly bit, or if I had simply been snapped off- but the same leader had successfully pulled in two other fish.

I went up to the East end of the loch and anchored and with leader sorted started again. Initially I missed a fish on the (substitute ) sedge but was soon into a better fish of about 1 pound in weight which put up a spirited fight.

But after a while it went decidedly quiet and little was happening, I had the odd rise near my flies but wasn’t getting  any further takes. After a couple of hours I still was on three to the boat so I decided to drift back to the mooring for my last half hour.

This proved very productive as I managed to get a further two fairly solid pound class fish in the net, yet again to the LTD Sedge. Finally as I lined up withthe mooring buoy and was winding in slack line to get tidied up a fish swirled at the Sedge and I missed!

There had been a few other missed takes so it could have been a double figures day with a few breaks but I was more than happy with the five- all safely released fish