Bluemoon Angling Thread

Some who follow my posts recently might get the impression that fly fishing is an easy way of catching bucket loads of trout. Well last Thursday certainly disproved that. I knew beforehand the forecast was poor but when I got to the loch it really was like we had stepped back to January, Stiff NE wind and around 5c.



All my winter gear on, boat set up, out I went....

Started with a fast glass and lures....nothing
fast glass and washing line.....nothing
straight line buzzers........nothing
saw a couple of fish moving so dries.........nothing
Di5 and booby/blobs.....nothing
buzzers under a bung.......nothing
had some soup to warm me up
midge tip and different lures.....nothing

by 2.00pm I hadn't had a touch and had seen one fish caught by the other 6 or 7 boats so it was fishing really really hard. I had already anchored and moved two or three times and it wasn't the weather for drifting as the wind had stiffened. I was certainly looking at a first blank of the season.

I decided to search the really deep water in the loch which goes down to around 40 feet. Anchored on the edge of the deeps, through out as long a line as I could and waited for my Di3 to take the flies down, a full minute before starting the retrieve. By now I had a yellow dancer on the point which is a famous go to lure in Scotland.
Yellow Dancer – Fly Fishing World

......nothing

One last cast before I jacked in for the day. Waited a full couple of minutes until the line was almost vertical under the boat and started a jerky twitched retrieve. If there was ever a lesson in never giving up and to fish as focused as you can irrespective of what has gone before this was it: when you are learning to fly fish one of the things that you are taught to do is hang the flies at the end of the retrieve. That basically means just let them dangle stationary in the water in case a fish has followed your fly back to the boat. Now I always try and do this but sometimes you get lazy and forget and just lift and cast out again. Not today though and as I carried out that last hang, the rod tip twitched once, twice. A fish was at the fly some ten feet down.

Now you are taught not to strike when this happens, just wait until the fish takes properly and the line locks up. However, 50% of the time at least when you get that twitch the line doesn't lock and the fish having pulled the fly's tail decides to try elsewhere. So quick decision to make, hit the fish or continue to hang, blank staring me in the face.

I hit it.

It turned out to be lovely naturalised rainbow, pushing 7lb, silver rays in its tail which was as big as my hand. It gave me more pleasure than catching a dozen stockies.

It must have been very deep in the water and attracted to the fly and followed it up to the surface. I was just lucky it was still 'mouthing' the fly when I lifted into it. I have a nice photo of the fish but its too large to post (MGB not lbs ;-) ).

Back it went and that was me finished for the day. Always end on a high.
 
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Some who follow my posts recently might get the impression that fly fishing is an easy way of catching bucket loads of trout. Well last Thursday certainly disproved that. I knew beforehand the forecast was poor but when I got to the loch it really was like we had stepped back to January, Stiff NE wind and around 5c.



All my winter gear on, boat set up, out I went....

Started with a fast glass and lures....nothing
fast glass and washing line.....nothing
straight line buzzers........nothing
saw a couple of fish moving so dries.........nothing
Di5 and booby/blobs.....nothing
buzzers under a bung.......nothing
had some soup to warm me up
midge tip and different lures.....nothing

by 2.00pm I hadn't had a touch and had seen one fish caught by the other 6 or 7 boats so it was fishing really really hard. I had already anchored and moved two or three times and it wasn't the weather for drifting as the wind had stiffened. I was certainly looking at a first blank of the season.

I decided to search the really deep water in the loch which goes down to around 40 feet. Anchored on the edge of the deeps, through out as long a line as I could and waited for my Di3 to take the flies down, a full minute before starting the retrieve. By now I had a yellow dancer on the point which is a famous go to lure in Scotland.
View attachment 16191

......nothing

One last cast before I jacked in for the day. Waited a full couple of minutes until the line was almost vertical under the boat and started a jerky twitched retrieve. If there was ever a lesson in never giving up and to fish as focused as you can irrespective of what has gone before this was it: when you are learning to fly fish one of the things that you are taught to do is hang the flies at the end of the retrieve. That basically means just let them dangle stationary in the water in case a fish has followed your fly back to the boat. Now I always try and do this but sometimes you get lazy and forget and just lift and cast out again. Not today though and as I carried out that last hang, the rod tip twitched once, twice. A fish was at the fly some ten feet down.

Now you are taught not to strike when this happens, just wait until the fish takes properly and the line locks up. However, 50% of the time at least when you get that twitch the line doesn't lock and the fish having pulled the fly's tail decides to try elsewhere. So quick decision to make, hit the fish or continue to hang, blank staring me in the face.

I hit it.

It turned out to be lovely naturalised rainbow, pushing 7lb, silver rays in its tail which was as big as my hand. It gave me more pleasure than catching a dozen stockies.

It must have been very deep in the water and attracted to the fly and followed it up to the surface. I was just lucky it was still 'mouthing' the fly when I lifted into it. I have a nice photo of the fish but its too large to post (MGB not lbs ;-) ).

Back it went and that was me finished for the day. Always end on a high.

Good fishing. I've been out the last two days but struggled. Thursday was absolutely freezing and today was hot and still. I think we need some settled weather.
 
6-A6-EB41-D-E2-EB-43-E7-A820-8598341-CC922.jpg
You really are a lucky bugger,I hope you know that :), it's one of the main reasons I love fishing it the surroundings
 
When you wake up at 5am on your day off, and all you can think of is the big perch you nearly had, off to the canal, c'mon, hopefully my ned rigged craw will do the trick, have a good day if you're out fishing, and tight lines (hate that saying :) )
 
Update from yesterday's fishing, I was talking to an older lady I see at the canal, she's there everyday feeding the duck's, she told me about a big fish she sees all the time, showed me where it lived, she didn't know what species but from her description it is a perch, it must of been the perch I just missed the last time, that was big.

Sadly I also bumped into the biggest bullshitter I've ever met whilst fishing, how great he is, the size of the fish he's had, told me i was wasting my time fishing this stretch, no fish, then went on to tell me he has had 40 since January biggest being 20 odd lb from this stretch, how he was going to kill some dogs that live on one of the boats and was going to take an iron bar to their owners, how he was going to batter and throw in the canal two lads who he didn't like for some reason, very aggressive and unpleasant man, it actually unnerved me, don't like violence at all, he was old so no threat to me, but something wasn't right, put me right off my fishing, I ended up going home about an hour later, I go fishing to get away from it all, the canal at Adlington is my favourite place, there's a sense of community with everyone i see on a regular basis, I won't let him put me off, next time I'm going to fuck him off straight away
 
Wow. Sounds like a total
Update from yesterday's fishing, I was talking to an older lady I see at the canal, she's there everyday feeding the duck's, she told me about a big fish she sees all the time, showed me where it lived, she didn't know what species but from her description it is a perch, it must of been the perch I just missed the last time, that was big.

Sadly I also bumped into the biggest bullshitter I've ever met whilst fishing, how great he is, the size of the fish he's had, told me i was wasting my time fishing this stretch, no fish, then went on to tell me he has had 40 since January biggest being 20 odd lb from this stretch, how he was going to kill some dogs that live on one of the boats and was going to take an iron bar to their owners, how he was going to batter and throw in the canal two lads who he didn't like for some reason, very aggressive and unpleasant man, it actually unnerved me, don't like violence at all, he was old so no threat to me, but something wasn't right, put me right off my fishing, I ended up going home about an hour later, I go fishing to get away from it all, the canal at Adlington is my favourite place, there's a sense of community with everyone i see on a regular basis, I won't let him put me off, next time I'm going to fuck him off straight away
wow, sounds like a total nut job to me mate. No wonder he put you off fishing. Not much you can do if someone parks themselves next to you on a canal though.
 
So my trip to Linlithgow Loch with my club went very much as expected based on the forecast. On the positive side we didn’t get hail or snow that hit Scotland a couple of days before.
Linlithgow Loch is a strange fishery. Located with a busy motorway on one side and Linlithgow town on the other, it’s not exactly get away from it all. It’s also encircled by a wide path that in usual times is enjoyed by cyclists, runners, the elderly out for a stroll and the normal posse of neds that infest every Scottish town of any size. On the plus side it is overlooked by Linlithgow palace ex home of Mary Queen of Scots and various other Royal dudes.
The Loch itself is long and relatively narrow with a good expanse of water 8 to 10feet deep which is perfect depth for buzzer fishing but it also has a very deep trench running across it.

The Loch holds a multitude of wildfowl from Swans all the way down to coots. Whilst pleasant to see, the fuckers have an annoying habit of crapping in the water which usually means poor visibility and when it warms up, algae growth.

anyway. To the fishing. It was cold and it was very wet. I lost one that took a pulled lure. It porpoises out of the water and spat the lure.
Had a very nice fish on a yellow dancer And then another under bizarre circumstances. I was chatting to my boat partner about moving and had the flies in the water at the side of the boat behind me. I suddenly feel a jolt from the rod and low and behold a fish has taken my middle dropper cormorant 6inches from the boa, six inches deep. Brilliant angling ;-(
anyway that was it for the day. By 2.00 we couldn’t feel hands and I was soaked through.
on that note we jacked in.
 
Talking about getting soaked, I have finally put in an order for new rain gear from a company called Halkon Hunt. Anyone have any experience of them?
 
Talking about getting soaked, I have finally put in an order for new rain gear from a company called Halkon Hunt. Anyone have any experience of them?
The best . Pricey compared to others but worth it. Customer service second to none. Owned by Alan Scotthornes wife .
 

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