Jim Crawford And Wullie Leach Have A Great Opening Day On The Lake Of Menteith

Wullie and I we were fortunate enough to get a boat on what is annually one of the hottest seats in the house for the start of the trout season in Scotland.

An opening day boat on The Lake of Menteith.

Great catching up with friends and the usual banter of the overwintered waist lines Lol.

 

The Lake of Menteith at the end of each season stocks heavily, usually with large fish in the 3/5lb range and for me that’s the target on opening days the following year.

Stunning fully mended solid missiles with shovel tails.

We arrived in the car park with broken cloud light winds and a very cold easterly wind.

Brass monkey on the fingers!!

Thinking about the constant cold weather and with the amount of rain the Stirling area has had we both thought the fish would be deep and a bit lethargic.

Airflo Di-5 sweeps were chosen as the weapons of choice to start with using a two booby set up with 4 ft to the bob fly then 10ft to the point.

A sunburst neon body, light pearl sparkle tail with piercing red ethafoam eyes.

On the point I fished a sunburst shellback Booby with white eyes and white shellback.

We started off right outside the harbour and drifted across to the first point before going into weedy bay. Sport was instant there with stockies being plentiful.

Moving down and further out to the shallow water buoys we drifted right into the weeds in Reedy bay, we found the fish further out bigger and deeper there so stopped popping the boobies and just let them sink as quick as possible.

4-5lb bracket fish out there and the smaller stock fish closer to the drop off and weed beds.

We left there and went up to  Lochend in front of Jimmy Nairn’s house, a predominantly shallower area, a few boats were already there with the odd fish being caught by my team mates Derek Hessett and Andy Dunn, not enough action happening there though so we headed down to chicken leg bay where Wullie picked up an absolute cracker, like him a proper lump. Lol 

Leaving there we popped round to the back of the gap again and I picked up nice fish there.

Looking along Sandy bay we spotted some buzzer feeders in the calmer water close to the shore. We moved into the area and had another burst of sport then suddenly nothing.

We decided then to go back to the bigger fish well out in the open water off reedy bay and getting there we were straight into the bigger fish, again they were quite a bit deeper.

Try and judge by your cast and where your hooking the fish to judge the depth which the fish are feeding allowing you to alter your cast to suit.

As the day was drawing to an end, we had a great buzzer hatch, size 10/12 black buzzers.

We did notice as the day went on the point Booby easily out fished the bob telling us the fish had lifted in the water and were grazing on them. A quick spoon of a trout proved us right.

Points to consider while Booby fishing setting up your gear.

1.Wind speed, you don’t want them out the back of the boat.

2.Colour of the water will help you decide which colours to use.

A fantastic day with the usual sarcastic banter with a great mate.

On behalf of Wullie and myself and all the guys and girls in The Fly Shop team, please stay safe and look after yourselves and we all hope to see you on the water again, real soon.

Best wishes Jim

https://theflyshop.co.uk/stillwater-flies/boobies/sunburst-elevator-booby

https://theflyshop.co.uk/stillwater-flies/boobies/sunburst-neon-booby