Well, the Wind Turned…

So a bit of a redux of last weekend’s outing to Loch Coulter. Like pretty much everyone just now I am feeling the pinch just now and have a few outgoings this month which means if I can get out without outlaying any actual money, so it was either off down the river ( Carron) or back up to Coulter. It didn’t seem more than a gentle breeze at home and was in fact quite mild if not actually warm so I decided to return to Coulter and try to break the duck I had encountered last weekend. Also, the thought of trout rising to copious Hawthorne flies ( there were loads up there last week, so hopefully that would still be the case) was too big a draw.

However, almost the instant I got out of the car I was met with a wall of rain that seemed to switch on with my arrival. I was trying to get my waders on and not get the boot of my car soaked in the process as the rain swept in driven on a wind blowing from the southwest…pretty much the polar opposite of last week’s cold easterly. Up at the Loch, the wind was much stronger than I had ever anticipated and my initial efforts at a few casts from the boat pier along to the end of the dam wall were quite hard work unless I cast parallel with the shore as the wind was otherwise head-on.

So while I managed to fish a band about 3 or 4 metres wide, maybe 10 metres out from the shore fairly effectively, this wasn’t something I was enjoying greatly and soon upped sticks and headed back off round the loch. On the walk around the loch I couldn’t help but notice the clouds of Hawthorne flies still swarming around the bushes and with the wind blowing here onto the water, there surely had to be some strays getting knocked into the loch, and hopefully some fish to be in receipt of them.

At Poachers Point where I had fish from then into Burn Bay last week the wind was now coming from my right and was anything from “strong” to “fierce”. Fishing into the margins of the bay was not going to be a practical option for me so after about 10-15 minutes of fishing on and around the point I retreated to the bank for some respite. So far I had been fishing a floating line with a weighted lure on point and a Zulu and a small cormorant on the droppers. I felt I had two options, I could go “all in” and try fish my flies on or in the surface, though I was seeing nothing this far, to suggest anything was being taken off the top, or I could swap to an intermediate line and try a little deeper. At the point where I was, fishing deeper was not an impractical option, however, if I decided to move further along the southern shore away from the point to try to find some respite from the wind that kept flaring up into massive gusts, I would struggle to make much headway under the surface as there is a lot of new weed growth just subsurface that would snag me at every opportunity. I decided to swap to a team of three bushy wet flies, a Heather Fly Snatcher on point, a black Pennel on the dropper and a nondescript bushy wet hopper pattern on the top dropper. If asked to describe its colour I would say it was somewhere between black and peacock ( the dubbing was likely that peacock effect dubbing you get.) I had no idea when I had tied it, but it was a leggy pattern and I wanted this given the dangly legged Hawthornes about the place.

I stuck out fishing at and near the point another ten minutes or so but the wind blew up so fierce at times I could barely cast and I decided it was really time to find some shelter. I gathered my gear and headed for the shelter further around the corner along the shore. I waded through the shallows and there were literally tens of thousands of Hawthorne flies and small black midges on or flying near to the surface. Surely the fish “had” to be keyed in on this, but I was seeing no sign if they were, thus far. About 40 metres along the shore I dropped my gear and waded out to about knee-deep. I had previously ginked up the flies to hold them on or near the surface and so took the time now to apply some dessicant powder to keep them buoyant.

I cast out, not far, no more than 20-25 feet in front of me, to be out of that wind was such a relief and the water was so much calmer here, not flat just a decent small wave. The flies landed, I straightened them up and left them static. I didn’t need to wait long at all, there was a pucker at the point fly, I lifted and I was onto a fish. I won’t lie, the fight it put up really wasn’t that impressive, and it never really gave any sort of resistance until I had waded it back towards the shallow water near the shore, but by then it was too late and easily netted. So I was surprised that it was such a long fish and looked to be comfortably somewhere between 1 lb and 1.5lbs maybe at a push. It had the Heather Fly Snatcher in its scissors. I removed the fly and after a quick picture to prove the duck was broken, it swam off.

I fished on after redressing the flies and rose a couple of more fish mostly fairly close in, then actually contacted a fish with a good hard pull but the fish just didn’t hook up. Eventually, though with a slightly longer cast a fish obliged me and I was once again wading it to the net which I had left on the bank behind me. I had the net propped against my leg and wrestled in my pocket to get my phone out, as I was gathering a few short clips to use as a video VLOG, a few seconds of footage captured, then with all the messing about, you guessed it, it flicked itself off the barbless hook. SO while I never netted the fish I am counting it as a second as ordinarily, it would have comfortably have made it to the net! It’s my blog and my rules 🙂

I went back to fishing and I have to say it went a bit quiet. I was occasionally hearing if not seeing the odd fish rise but in the wave, they were hard to spot unless you happened to be looking in that direction as it happened. I had fished along the bank both back towards the point and then further up than I started. A couple of anglers passed by on one of the boats, I think they were the only anglers out on the water. While it wasn’t especially rough, I could imagine the casting on a boat would be pretty challenging in the conditions. They mentioned the wind being hard, and that they had lost 4 I think and netted two. They said the fish were being a bit cautious in the takes and weren’t getting properly hooked thus the high remote release rate.

It was certainly not sounding a million miles different to my own experience. After three, like last week the wind really got up and the cold wind started to bite my fingers. My thoughts were starting to consider the walk back around the loch to the boathouse and the car. But then a wee break in the clouds appeared and once again the sun shone for a spell and that wind relented a touch. A long way out a fish rose, the first I had seen in some time. I took careful note of a mark on the far beyond, dam wall to get a line on where the fish was and spooled out pretty much all my running line on my fly line. While it was a long way away, with the following wind and a decent cast I was confident I could cover it. I flung out a lengthy cast and the flies landed probably no more than a metre to the left of where the fish had shown, but the wind soon gets hold of a floating line ad the flies were being dragged away from the area reasonably quickly. I let the flies fish, you never know the fish might follow or might even be sitting somewhere across from where it rose ( assuming it was there at all). Nothing. I figure of weighted the line back and prepared to cast again, I still had a good mark to aim at but this time I directed the cast to land a little more upwind of the area and this time it would drift the flies across the spot I had spied the fish. I waited maybe 10 seconds then there was a splash and I was able to lift into the fish. Keeping a fish on at long range is never easy as you have the entire weight of the line to deal with and the drag in the water but somehow I was able to get line in on it very quickly before it was able to try to resist and it then became just a matter of staying tight to the fish and getting it near to the net….no mistakes with filming on a phone this time, it was netted and the Heather Fly Snatcher simply slipped out in the net and it was off again.

A very successful few hours and I was happy to head back now and get some feeling back in my fingers. Duck Broken.