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I had a look around this lovely looking loch yesterday on an overcast day, but with a little bit of wind. I did a bit of casting around and found that the south west bank was very shallow and also very weedy. This morning, a very slight breeze was blowing into the North East bank so after a quick sniff of the air on this side of the loch, I decided to fish here, initially, with the intention of moving to the South West bank if the fishing was slow.
I had a streaming cold which had been incubating for a few days and didn’t feel up to much walking, or even fishing, but fortunately it wasn’t necessary; I just walked from the car park and set up on the beach. The water is deeper here maybe dropping off to 6 or maybe 7 feet further out and the bottom seems less rocky and weedy.
Anyway, I set up the first rod with one of my home made floats with a small sliding leger weight and cast it to the left of my swim, a smelt chosen for ease. I put the rod on the buzzers as it was misty and still quite dark, but I always use buzzers as well as floats whenever I can. I was setting up the second rod, the buzzer from the first started to bleep intermittently. I couldn’t see the float very well in the gloom, but I leaned into the fish which tail walked almost all the way to the bank and eventually turned into a 6.12. I was very pleased to catch straight away.
Within an hour I had a second on the leger rod I think, and I believe I lost the third which ticked me off a bit. Don’t let them tail walk, because that’s when the hook pulls. I reckon that I had four fish in the first hour and a half and certainly by about 10 I had had half a dozen, from about a dozen runs or dropped runs. I had also had the two biggest by this time. Throughout the day I lost 4 fish, none of them felt very large. I caught on popped up baits, drifted baits cast to striking fish: I had two fish attack the baits on the way in and finally, I caught a six pounder on a Kuusamo Professor. There were fish everywhere and they were striking near the surface as well. I learnt a lot today and I caught fish on herring tails and heads, mackerel, whole and halves, smelt popped up and legered and eel section produced some too, but not as many as I expected. A real red letter day!
