In keeping with my policy of reporting on all my fishing, the good and the bad, first off I must ‘fess up and say I did fish for a few hours on Saturday afternoon and totally failed to illicit any interest from a fish. As I am on call this week and can’t stray far, I just took a run-up to the loch at Bridge of Allan in the hope it might be worth a cast on what was an unusually fine September day.
Actually it was arguably too fine, the sun beamed down most of the time and but for a few very short spells when the sun vanished behind the odd stray cloud, I never saw much move. Another angler was out fishing from a float tube. He told me he had been there last weekend and had 6 fish to dries even when there was no sign of fish on top, they were happily rising to a fly cast on the surface.
That wasn’t the case this weekend though. I never had so much as a pull, or a show of interest to anything I tried. Initially, I tried wets, then dries then a heavier fly on a floater before going deeper with an intermediate. I did make a silly mistake in heading up there with only 6lb tippet, usually I fish 4lb there but foolishly left it in my garage, so was fishing a bit heavy. Maybe that was the problem.
The chap on the float tube did get a couple in the time I was there but it wasn’t like he was slaying them either. As I was making ready to leave Will Gregory turned up and after about 20 minutes, managed to christen his new Hardy Demon rod getting one on a wee nymph in what appeared to be the deeper margins on the south side.
Coming up
So while this season draws to a close, I still have a few outings to look forward to. Once I get this week’s on-call out the way, the North West Highlands beckon for a trip I have wanted to make for many many years. I will be taking far too much stuff as usual but hopefully the outflow of that will be that I will have some images and footage to share with you here and on my You Tube Channel. After a LOT of videos, it seems now to be getting a bit more attention, with a bit of a surge in subscribers this last month or so. If you have not subscribed to the channel, it would do me a huge favour if you nipped over there now and hit the subscribe button so you are amongst the first to know when I post some new video.
Fly tying with old materials
I have been getting some time to sit down and tie a few flies and one of the patterns I have been tying are variants of that well-known fly, the Black Pennel.
One of the reasons I have always disliked tying this fly ( easy though it is) is the use of silver tinsel as the body rib. I often resort to silver wire as the oval tinsel you get these days is frankly crap. I find I invariably manage to strip the coating off it, as it seems to be some sort of fine thread “coated” with a tinsel skin. It takes little tension to pull the coating off and you have horrible gaps in the ribbing.
Last year an old friend, Alan, gave me his late fathers old fly tying box. There were a lot of fairly ancient-looking materials in there, some which were past their best but some which I have enjoyed making use of. Old hen capes don’t suffer much with age, the old Pearsall’s silks were in surprisingly good nick ( not a material renowned for its longevity) but best of all was an old spool of Veniards tinsel. This old spool is nothing like Veniards 21st century product. On the spool it has that same ribbed look to it but it is much much better material. It actually feels more like a slightly soft metal wire.
It is actually very nice to use, it doesn’t strip and it squashes down flat under thread bodies. I actually enjoyed tying a few of these Pennel variants. I was told a white-headed Pennel was an effective fly on the Assynt hill lochs so will tie a few this week with my “new” old tinsel.
