Yesterday was my first time fishing at Stenhouse Trout Fishery, fishing with my club. I don’t think my visit was really a fair reflection on the water which I understand is quite popular locally and which I have heard good things about. I was looking forward to going, I always enjoy visiting new venues. Also, I had heard it was particularly good for buzzer fishing, but when I pulled up in the car park it was apparent that the loch ( a moderately sized reservoir) was in the throes of a bit of an algal bloom. Some waters get this, at this time of year, a symptom of long hours of daylight, and I imagine the presence of nitrates and phosphates running off land used for agriculture or rearing sheep and cattle.
Algal blooms can be a nuisance to the angler but their effect on the fishing can be hard to quantify. I recall several years ago, fishing Linlithgow Loch. It had a bloom I would argue worse than the one at Stenhouse yesterday. Every cast you had to pull in your flies and clean off the green slime that built-up on the flies. Yet for all that, and it really was a pain to deal with, I still had a great days fishing, and I had something like four or five trout.
Fishing the Bloom: Thoughts
I really am not sure how the fish react to these blooms. Does the total absence of clear lateral visibility hamper their willingness to take a fly? I always tend to think that we assume too much as anglers, in bestowing fish with the same thought processes and abilities we have as humans. I have fished water that I would regard as chocolate brown with no visibility at all yet caught on very small beaded nymphs.
Fish sense
The eyesight of fish has a different makeup to ours, is adapted to low light, attuned to very small objects and fish are also bestowed with a lateral line that allows them to sense things around them. How they “see” via this lateral line we can only guess much as we guess with Bats and their amazing sound-based “radar” system. Do they build up a picture in their tiny brains of their surroundings? I have caught one-eyed fish that seemed to have no problem taking a fly and many Sea Trout anglers pursue their quarry in the dark with great success. I do think if your fly gets caked in slimy algae though it has to put a fish off that can see it. Fortunately the algae while bad wasn’t causing too much problem on this front yesterday.
And for Dry flies?
For Dry fly fishing, while being able to see the fly has to help a great deal in the likelihood of success in green water like this, at the same time a fish cruising a couple of feet down in fairly bright sunlight must be able to detect the shadow of the fly. I never tried a dry fly yesterday but Bill did with no luck. The few fish we actually saw move on top, (I think Bill was able to cover two and myself one), never responded to flies dropped right on the ring of the rise.
Excuses?
So with all these thoughts on the table- what is my excuse for blanking yesterday? It wasn’t for the lack of effort I will tell you. My starter was a floating line with a big foam and Deer Hair Daddy on point. Droppers were a couple of buzzers. Anchored out in the middle just off the island there was a big pull about 45 minutes in, but it never took hold of the fly ( whichever one it had a go at). After sticking with this a while longer I decided to swap to an Intermediate and fish a bit deeper. We also moved around all the fishable areas of the water with little discernable change to results.
More Thoughts
Another thing in water like this that we don’t know, is how deep the algae goes. Is it top to bottom or is there a clear area may be between the bottom and say six feet? Water has zones of temperature and light and algae needs light to bloom. I suspect if you were to dive in you might find a “halocline” of sorts where the algae isn’t found. The fish might be sat under this strata. Has anyone done this, or lobbed a GoPro in to see?
Tactical changes
Changing flies, I went right to the bottom with a Di3 on. I tried a midge tip and straight-lined buzzers and under a bung with static buzzers fished vertically. I tried flies I never thought I would ever let see the light of day, let alone water. Would they get any interest? A huge “Rabbit” thing with split fur tail, a popper headed zonker to create a disturbance deep down ( I got my only other pull on one of these).
Fish were Caught
My boat partner Bill, had a fish totally out the blue on a small black Diawl Bach and later on again with no prior notification of interest, he got a second on his favourite Cats Whiskers. Of the guys I was there with, in total they had 14 fish, but there was no common pattern, depth or method that accounted for them. Graham, had two of his three he said about 10-12 feet down on bushy wet flies. Pete who had five (!!!!), found fish in one corner in particular. I think except for two he had on dries, the rest were on a variety of patterns. Amongst them a Yellow Blob and a big “Perch Fry” pattern. Given that two anglers accounted for 8 of the fish and my boat partner Bill had a further two, you can tell it wasn’t an easy day.
In short, it was a lottery, a “straw grab” if you like and yesterday I pulled the short straw. The fish that were caught were all very nice. One of Bill’s fish had to be a resident as it had a big full tail, stunning spots and was very lean and fit.
It wouldn’t put me off going back though, just maybe a different time of year.
