Jim Crawford Gets Back Out On The Lake Of Menteith

To say the last few months have been tough without fly fishing as you all know would be an understatement so when the opportunity arose for a day out on Lake of Menteith it was a no brainer.

With the precautions in place for booking and online payment I found it very well organised and safe on arrival at the Lake.

Quint was his usual self and Douglas wired to the moon as usual!!!!

Watching Facebook, it was easy to get excited some of the overwintered fish being shown were awesome, fully finned and tailed and torpedo shaped, no overfed fat stockies!! My boat partner for the day was Barry Tindell.

A lot of people would gasp at that as we support football teams from opposite sides of Glasgow “fiercely “ lol So the banter and craic was going to be on point all day.

With the temperature consistently rising due to our prolonged heatwave we had decided it was either the cages with Airflo di lines or take advantage of the light winds and overcast skies and hit Todd’s hole and drift across open water to chicken leg bay/inchmaholm island using dries.

Easy choice up went the Loop SX 10’ 6# with an Airflo superflo floater and a three-fly cast with a mix of cdc shuttle cocks, and flat back hoppers. Airflo super supple for me in 6lb was my leader of choice. I’ve found this excellent in knot strength and as the name says it is very supple!

On motoring over to Todd’s we found fish high and in small pods of fish place was alive with fish.We both were into fish right from the off and consistently caught all the way across the drift some coming blind and others targeted.Using a small black cdc flatback hopper on the bob a cdc fiery brown flat back in the middle and a black quill green butt shuttle cock on the point. Lots of fish in the 3 to 3.5 range with a good sprinkling of blues that were ultra-aggressive taking the flies. We then moved through the gap and completed a drift right along the plantation to the Lilly pads at the Mallin shore. Very surprisingly there we never had any offers or even saw any fish feeding .

Then a move to the cages where 8 boats were working the water and as we watched with only one other boat hooking a fish. I had a nice blue out in open water there and that was it dusted there. The big fellas didn’t play that day. We then moved back to the front of Jimmy Nairn’s house in Lochend where we watched the swallows feeding hard, again this area was stuffed with trout and we caught easily.

The sun was now burning away the cloud and Barry changed to a Rio sink tip and fab and Diawl Bach set up and again picked up fish with ease. His cast two size 10 Diawls with Fluoro green cheeks and a washed out coral fab. Overall a fantastic day out catching quality trout with the constant acidic tongue of my big mate.

Usually at this time of year the Caenis will start appearing and the trout fishing will slow down with them gorging and dropping during the day so, challenge accepted for my next visit.