welcome to scotland

you got to just shake your head sometimes , id looked at the weather forecast and it said bright with 10mph winds , not the most ideal conditions for pike fishing but sometimes you just got to go with it , and that's what i did the forecast said the wind would die down and to be honest i could handle 10mph even rowing by hand so with that in mind i arrived at the loch with a 50/50 confidence but sometimes its just great too be out in beautiful surrounding's

i was on the water early to make the most of things i like to get on water early first light if possible give me a better chance of being on the money when the underwater dinner bell goes off , so i rowed up the loch to my first spot and tried a few patterns around the area for a few hours .

there was nothing much going on using the intermediate line fishing down through the layers so i decided to change over to a floating line and an ugly Betty fly on the surface to see if i could get them agitated to take a surface fly making some noise i fished around the edges on some of my favorite lies where bank access is difficult so threes a bonus right there

with the wind getting up even worse and only a few half hearted nips at the flies i decide to take a break and dig up a late breakfast and think about what i was going to do next as i wasn't coming off the water till i had a fish to the boat , i knew the conditions were getting even harder with a now scorching sun beating down and the wind up to way more than 10mph i seriously needed a rethink on tactics , sometimes a radical change is the way to go on a hard day , the bummer is if this water was in the states id just stick on a gurgler and go largemouth , well it ain't its Scotland so a rethink is the only thing i can do

my thinking was black yup plain old black flies on the bottom ya see the water is still pretty green and rubbish visibility and i figure on such a hot day i figured the fish would be down on the deck , so i rigged up a 5 inch subbug in noir (black to me and you) i also changed to a stripped bass intermediate line as i still wanted to search out the layers with this fly , first cast i let the fly go right down and did a strip pause strip and within a a couple of pulls the rod arched over into a satisfying curve FISH ON BABY the bug does it again

a first look as it shot to the surface very annoyed at getting caught out

the way the bug was sitting in the pike mouth i guessed id pulled the fly right past its mouth anyway the fish couldn't resist the passing snack and it nailed it check out the teeth

just got to love those predators and on a day where conditions were bloody awful i was delighted to be holding a well earned fish


and there you have the killer bug , this is highly visible in the water and the 7mm animal eyes give it the action of a glidebait in the water , used with the wonderful authentic wire from predatorbite.com give this sub bug maximum movement in the water i mean this thing really does look like a fish in the water

so my box of shinny stuff was confined to the box all day , as i carried on to miss a load of fish to the bug mostly turning at the side of the boat in shallow water that all they wanted black bugs .

so with the wind getting up i decided to head back to the dock and home as there was white caps starting to happen and that's never a good sign . its really quite rare to have a day like this in Scotland at this time of year and from now on i think the weather will go down the pan its already being forecast snow for the end of October , but ill still manage a couple of trips out and hopefully a few more through November if the snow holds off well you cant believe the forecasters
got a busy week ahead lots of tying to do so stay tuned midweek

mcfluffchucker

(a cave in Scotland)