Martyn White | Thursday, 5 September 2024
After being in Scotland for the wettest August since records began, early September has actually been quite nice to me. I found some old books while rummaging in my dad's cupboards and picked another few up in second hand bookshops. But more importantly, we've had cool, but stable weather and only a little rain. So Davie and I went out on the loch we grew up fishing. It's not a huge water at a couple of miles long and maybe 3/4 wide, but plenty big enough for a long day's lure or fly fishing.
We started off quite confidently in the "deadly bay" and got a few follows and tail nips but no serious eats. We both decided we should slow things down due to the cooler temperatures. No dice. fly changes messing around with retrieves, but only more follows. It's something, but not a fish in the boat. We only realised what they wanted when we were moving to another area. I had been having some line issues so bombed a long cast out behind the boat and dragged it as we motored over. We were both pretty taken aback when a jack pike about 3lb exploded on my fly as it rattled along behind us. To be honest it was kind of surprising the fish managed to catch it given the speed we were going. Once that non-counting fish was unhooked and released we carried on down the loch and got ready to fish. Despite our expectations, speed was the answer and while it was pretty hard work keep things moving quick enough we started to pick up a few fish on roly-poly retrieves. Unfortunately the water wasn't clear enough that we could always spot follows and speed up so we just had to keep things moving for the whole retrieve... Exhausting after a while, but I was really glad to get into some fish.
After a while we spotted some decent to large perch tracking our flies, which was enough for me to put down the fly rod and pick up a little spinning outfit Davie has in the boat. I absolutely love perch and there's no fish in the UK that I'd rather catch at specimen size. Catching hundreds isn't my thing but I really think Dick Walker was right when he said they're the biggest fish of all. I'll take a 2lb perch over a 15lb pike any day. They're just special. I could have fished a smaller fly but a 10wt for perch is just a bit too much overkill for me, so the 2-10grammer and a little rattlin' rapala was the choice. Long casts and a high rod tip and burning it back just above the weed beds produced a nice half pounder on the first cast and I was able to pick up a few more fish before we set up a new drift. As the wind dropped we could see the perch chasing fry on top which meant we could shorten the casts and target them as they showed. There were also a load of little pike getting involved, which was fine but not what I was after by that stage. While there were no huge perch I had a few nicer fish and there were no tiny ones before that shut down and we went back to looking for pike. In the end the best pike was about 5lb, we had a few follows from bigger fish but couldn't convert them- even with a figure 8 at the boat. Still, even with nothing big, we caught fish and enjoyed the day, especially after the weeks of weather that was starting to feel like a prison sentence.
I'm heading back to Japan at the weekend, so looking forward to a bit of heat and maybe some float tubing or carp while the weather is still warm which will be a stark contrast to my "summer" in Scotland and will also help me drop the kilos I've put on from all the Stornoway black pudding I've been eating.