At time of writing it is a steady 12 degrees with a light southerly wind and there is even the possibility that the fish are feeding near the top of the water.
One does not want to tempt fate by mentioning the ‘Spring’ word but some of the wildlife at Lochter are showing signs that, for them, it might just be around the corner.
The male blackbirds are engaged in acrobatic aerial combat with each other, the ducks have smugly paired up, the oyster catchers have returned to patrol the water edges and if you are lucky you will catch the blue flash of plumage, as our resident kingfisher busies himself patrolling our 3 lochs with military precision.
On the fishing front, the fine weather and open water brought out battalions of eager anglers to do battle on our recently re-stocked lochs.
Double figure results seemed to be the order of the day.
Paul Keir had two outings during the week. On his first he had 24 fish for his day on a black fritz and black buzzer with one of them being a nice 5lb fish. On his second he did even better with 32 fish on an olive fritz and damsel and this time his biggest fish was a lovely well rounded 8lb specimen.
Colin Macdonald from Aberdeen on his two outings had 26 and 21 fish respectively using his reliable set up of cormorants and buzzers, his biggest fish being 6lbs 8oz.
Lloyd Rattray fished a slow bloodworm and brought 20 fish to the net and he was well chuffed that his biggest weighed in at 8lbs.
Graham Duthie, refreshed from his recent holiday in Florida related that while fishing there he caught a big-mouthed bass on a WSW lure, which just proves its global effectiveness. It certainly still worked at Lochter as well as he had 17 fish, fishing with WSW in the morning and diawl bachs in the afternoon.
Looking through the return book other notable efforts were Ryan Reid from Ellon with 14 fish on buzzers and okay dokays, one being 9lbs in weight. Also with 14 fish was Keith Bruce from Aberdeen on cormorants. Fishing buddies Bill Bain and Peter Wilson came out for a six hour session and had 12 and 10 fish respectfully, Bob Logan had 11 on damsels, Gary Gormley had 10 on some of his finely crafted buzzers and Peter Young had 9 fish; five of which he caught on a dry fly and hares ears set up and the remainder were on buzzers.
A special mention must go to the Achonachie Angling Club from Strathconon who fished a leg of their Winter League at Lochter on Saturday in near perfect weather conditions.
Many fish were caught and it was good to see the camaraderie and fun being enjoyed the members of this obviously thriving club.
With the weather forecast for the weekend being positively balmy, then it would be the ideal time for those ‘first timers’ this year to dust off their kit and head to the waters edge.
Tight Lines,
SP 19/2/19
