Euan was up for a visit over the late weekend and he and I had a day on Loch Assynt on Monday.
Conditions were perfect, overcast, nice warm wind and a great ripple on the loch.
Things looked good.
I took the full armoury with me (fly rod, dapping rod and trolling rods) and we started the day from the Inchnadamph end in the grey pioner boat the hotel lets out on behalf of the club (£37 for a day for the boat, including outboard, fuel, permits etc). If you take that boat out be warned it drifts like a pig. Take a good big drogue with you and know how to use it is my tip.
The first drift was a fair indicator of how the day would go.
Tough.
Even to the dap the fish were reluctant to have a go, in stark contrast to our June visit it was clear it would be a hard day. After a few drifts and a few half-hearted offers we had some lunch and trolled up to try the northern shore - pic of trolling and lunch:
Didn't touch a thing on the troll so having reached a burn mouth we wanted to cover back to the fly we went. Not quite enough of a breeze for the dap at that point so I switched back to wet fly and bingo
One really hard wee scrapper took my claret bumble like a train.... fought twice as hard as you'd expect for his size:
But a beautiful wee fish:
We covered that drift again and, with a good breeze, I had the dap up. Had a real cracker in the 2lb class take the fly but after bending the rod for a few short seconds it fell off
And so it continued, a few wee fish but hard going. Went back to the troll again and other than one suicidal brownie that took a 30gram Toby (which was only a couple of inches smaller than the fish itself
) it was pretty damn quiet.
Another trolling pic:
Although it was a really enjoyable day, it was a wee bit frustrating as the fishing was inconsistent at best - but we managed a bakers dozen or so between us. Very odd, ideal conditions and hard going with hardly a fish moving.... kind of reminded me of fishing the Don
Thanks to Euan for the pics
Only other thought from the day was the sad condition other 'anglers' leave the boats in. Loads of gash mono lying around, fag butts, rubbish etc etc. Even found a spool of 20lb mono lying on the shore. It's not the impression I think we should be making as anglers and it depresses me that folk just don't give a shit about leaving their rubbish for others to deal with
H