Join The Club
- Details
- Published on Thursday, 03 January 2008 05:22
- Written by Billy Wales
“Bloody hell,” shouted Gordon“ that was incredible!“ My good friend and boat partner had just watched a lovely yellow bellied troot take to the air and turn down onto the large spent daddy longlegs I had laid onto the surface seconds before. It was mid August on “The Daer“ reservoir, and fishing doesn’t really get much better for me. Out with a good friend on a braw day when the troots are free rising and jumping on dry flies.
This was my first season on this big reservoir that can be found tucked away in the Lowther hills in Southern Scotland. With more and more brown trout lochs in Central and Southern Scotland turning to rainbow fishing, I had started to worry that there would be nowhere left that I could indulge in my favourite pastime, boat fishing for wild broonies. A lifeline was thrown my way in the shape of a membership with Kilbryde AC which has the fishing on this grand water.
The season had started on a snowy, blustery day in March when the six boats owned by the club were manhandled into the water from their over winter storage place by the loch. None of the members was brave enough to take to the water that day, preferring to cup hands round the homemade soup that was being dished out in the shelter of the storage container. It would be during the following weeks that my reflexes would be sharpened, and my nerves tested to the limit, by lightning fast “hauf punners” hammering into, and rejecting in a millisecond, a succession of Clan Chiefs, Black Pennells and Loch Ordies. These flies. pulled through the dark peaty water on an intermediate line, would eventually land me a good few fish during those early spring days.
In contrast, there was that aforementioned summer’s afternoon that Gordon and I spent stealthily approaching sheltered bays using an electric outboard, and casting daddies onto the gently moving surface, in expectation of trapping confident trout with suicidal tendencies. This after a breezy morning fishing muddlers through the wave tops, when fish after fish tried their hardest to wrest the flylines from our pulling hands, slashing viciously at the flies on every cast. Every corner of The Daer seems to offer different tactics and approach, no two days being the same. On other occasions heather flies blown onto the water in magnificent quantities made the loch boil, the rings so close together they overlapped. Flasks and sandwiches were thrown aside in our haste to find the boxes with the dry heather patterns secreted months before.
Not even the hard cold winds of September that kept the fish subsurface could stop us from taking and returning many that month on wee doubles, sunken hoppers and, the fly of the season for me, the Clan Chief. But the winds and the waves that month did provide me with the most terrifying day on the loch, threatening to turn the boat side on and overturn us, despite the best efforts of a good outboard motor. I’m happy to say I survived to enjoy the last day out in the boat, on the last Sunday of that month. A day that was more like it should have been in July, if it had been any other year. The warm sunshine and light south westerly winds, pushing the boat steadily along the road shore, Jamie and I picking up acrobatic fish every now and then, from loch end to tree bay. All too soon we gathered at the moorings to haul the boats out and return them to their winter hibernation, and from there it was on to the wee village of Leadhills to enjoy a fabulous meal with my new club mates, a fine end to my first season on a magnificent wild broonie water.