This week in the howe of Lochter the arrival of the Autumnal Equinox means we now have an equal amount of daylight and darkness. This is normally the time that the fish sense this change and start to feed greedily to stock up for the long Winter ahead.
The Scottish ‘tropical’ weather of last week was very much welcomed but it did make it tricky to be constantly ‘on the fish’.
Once again our big ‘Lochter troot’ proved to be the demise of many a favourite fly and cast with many tales of savage takes and breaks.
We even had an incident where one of our mighty fish took off, pulling a sinking line at an alarming rate from the reel and was soon down to the backing. How often have we fishers been in that situation but unfortunately this time the line and backing parted company leaving its poor angler staring at his reel in despondent disbelief as his line descended to the depths.
However it was not all doom and gloom with plenty of success stories during the week.
Jim Stronach from Newmachar had one of those days when you couldn’t go wrong fishing on apps bloodworm with diawl bachs droppers on an intermediate line. He had 15 fish to the net with several being over the 6lb range.
Colin MacDonald had 2 outings during the week and did splendidly well with 19 & 14 fish respectively. He used either crunches or cormorants with one fish at 12lb 13oz and another in the 10lb range although he couldn’t accurately weigh it as his battery scales had run out. No doubt due to his good run of big fish being weight recently – lucky man.
Albert Trail used the classic diawl bach and buzzer combination to good effect as it got him 12 fish with Keith Bruce landing 11 fish on crunchers and diawl bachs.
Fred McAlly used the CDC and F fly on the top of the water and it gave him 10 fish, also on 10 fish was Dave Mackay on small black lures.
Other recorded returns were Bill Wood with 9 fish on buzzers and okay dokays, Neil Grant had 8 on buzzers and Dave Burns had continued success with a nice shade of blue cormorants.
With cooler weather predicted for the week ahead normal Autumn flies and tactics may now come into their own. Just check your knots and upgrade your breaking strain if you dare to venture down Lochter way.
Tight lines,
S.P 22/9/20.
