Who’s the Daddy…….

…..not me!

A fine looking afternoon and though feeling a bit tired I felt a couple of hours up at Pendreich would do me good. Having arrived and started to tackle up, a family walking by on the dam wall with two dogs let them off the leash.
Here was I with a detached daddy longlegs fly in my right hand and the nylon tippet in my left with it threaded through the eye and a Jack Russell Terrier runs into my line. Nearly hooking me with the fly and tangling the leader. I managed to extricate the dog without losing the fly or piercing myself or the dog with the fly. ( this is relevant)
So moving on ten minutes having walked up the north side of the loch with the breeze coming off that shore and fish rising  here and there, in the perfect corduroy ripple.
Two gents were in the boat but they hadn’t caught and spent most of the time rowing up and down the loch.

Daddy Longlegs ( Crane flies) are everywhere just now and seem to have a suicidal urge to go for a swim

I cast out and immediately the wind changed direction now blowing off my right shoulder.
It took me a couple of casts to get the line out straight then I tweaked it back. A head emerged from the water, a fine trout it,  grabbed the fly, I lifted, resistance a splash, then slack. Not again, not another broken tippet…. No a poorly tied on fly, it was gone, betrayed by the curly pig tail. My bad but the Jack Russell was implicated.
A new detached daddy on, I cast and in the ripple I was slow to lift when another fish came for the fly. A miss. I had a look at my leader and it had a bird’s nest of a tangle in the tippet. Off came the Stroft, too soft and twisting with the big daddy on,  replaced with 4X 7lb flurocarbon, stiffer and less prone to twisting.
I cast on maybe another couple of dozen times and a fish rose to my right. I covered it and there was a splash.
Fish on! It headed right down, it was a very strong fish. I never caught sight of it, hard on the bottom though it was and then it started to take line with the rod bent double. I was merely a connected bystander and the fish was firmly in control. I think this was the first time I have ever wished I had a reel with a drag on. My LRH lightweight couldn’t stop this fish. I angled the rod against the run of the fish and it stopped. It then started to swim off out from the bank. I really felt it was going to take all the line. The last fish that I ever had that took line like this was the substantial Grayling I caught on the Annan a while back, and it had the benefit of the flow of the river with it.

Then the line suddenly went slack……………

Nooooooooooooooooo!

I brought the line in and everything was intact, the fish seemed to slip the barbless Varivas 22o0BL. I tend to tie detached daddy’s on these hooks but they do have a wide gape and might not be up to the job of a bigger fish, but it looked OK when i got it back in. It might have been a strong two pound fish or it might have been  giant, I have no way to know.
I managed to get one further pull but again it never stuck as I retrieved the fly wet.
I decided to move and fished down the bank but nothing else showed interest. Fish were rising along near the dam wall. The wind was being a real nuisance with my light line so I moved onto the dam.

It then went a bit quiet and but for a  refusal nothing showed for a while. A fish then showed well out and I moved along the wall to cover it. My fly landed no more than a yard away. It rose and it took. I lifted I felt the line tighten, resistance and the fish turned then it came free. Not again ! Was it the hook? I brought it in and it looked like it had opened up. Time for a change.

A Sedge in the moss on the dam wall

Then something really odd happened. A fish rose to my left, the front half clean out the water. If I was asked in a court of law I would have to say it was a blue trout of about a pound. It couldn’t be? I covered it and immediately it did the same again but seemed to miss the fly. I couldn’t fathom what kind of fish it was. It really looked blue. I tried again and it happened a third time. Was it a jack pike maybe? No idea, it never came back and the loch now much calmer became harder to fish, I gave it a while more but game over. Another blank but still fabulous sport in a couple of hours. The fish are clearly on the Daddy Longlegs, I seen countless crane flies hopping on the water then not long after a splash or a swirl and it was gone. There were a few sedges about, “motor boating” round on the surface but to be honest, though it crossed my mind to give one a go, I never seen a fish take one.

Fishing the Daddy is a funny thing, I had something similar last year, the fish often rise or splash at it but successful hook ups seem to be hard to come by. I have heard the fish often try to drown the fly and turn for it sub surface but trying fish by waiting for a second go at the fly is kind of hard. Would be interesting to hear your experience.