Evening rise saves Karti & Dave

Dave and Karti were travelling from the East coast yesterday after a round at St Andrews Golf Course the previous day, so we had a late start to the day.

A fine Oban brown trout

This did'nt worry me too much, as I will admit we have been struggling in the last week or so due to the very hot weather followed by very cold days, so I was glad to have a trip that would extend to sunset rather than just during the day to maximise our chances.

We were greeted at the Nant basin at 6pm by mirror flat water, so we could see a few fish rising, but they were frustratingly far out. We went through the fly box a little as the guys warmed up their casting, and settled on a wee dark emerger for Karti fished still with the odd twitch, and a muddler minnow stripped fairly quickly across the surface for Dave.

Midge nets were necessary for the flat calm conditions

We had a couple bites from small fish, but nothing committing until we made a couple moves. Whether it was the sun setting, or finding the right bay we will never know, but the action suddenly kicked off with explosive takes on muddler minnows right under the rod tips. Final score was 3 to Dave, but the biggest fish to Karti, so il leave them to argue for the overall winner of the evening!

We continued getting hits until we were almost casting into the night and decided we should probably call it a night when it got too dark to untangle line from the countless christmas trees surrounding the loch on a dropped back cast.

Apologies for the terrible photo quality, it was a lot darker than it seems!

The colour on each fish perfectly demonstrated the variation we get in a single loch up here