Monday May 8th 2006
I went down to Manresa today, around 10am, and was too late for the bite, which had cooled off about an hour or so earlier.
I used my 8 1/2' 6wt lamiglas rod today, with the new 27' T8 head + 20lb amnesia. The rod handled this just fine, had no trouble casting a brace of a rusty squirrel plus the glo-fly, and the amnesia behaved well. Previously I had cast at 250 grain shooting head with this rod, but that had felt too heavy for it. This setup feels just right. Sure feels good when the amnesia just flows out, without tangling.. I just wish I could get the head to fly nice and straight though, seems that it often ends up in something of a jumble when it splashes down. Time for some lawn-practice with it, I think.
On another interesting note, I talked with my neighbor Allen the other day, and have an invitation to come along on one of his kayak clinics. He'll set me up with a conventional rod and such, but I'll bring flyrod plus sinking head along for the trip. Should be a fun write-up when it happens.
Anyway, today I didn't feel any hits at all. It was nice to be out, but I'd rather have caught some fish too. Apparently the bite was ok earlier, but changed with the tide.
Saturday May 6th
Went fishing with Deva and his dad Willie, on Loch Lomond. I got there around 8 or so, as we had a really late night at home the night before. Deva had caught a couple of trout already (I made sure he killed the one that looked like it was still gasping).
Mellow morning.. we ended up casting for bass, then trolling for trout. The guys had a couple of hits on worms, but none stuck. We expected catching something trolling in the deeper part, but nothing. I was using the outbound 8wt fast-sinking line, which seemed to go deep enough, hanging a white pike-sara at the end. I also tried a woolly bugger, but that got snagged on something on the bottom, as we passed the little island, and I lost it.
At the other end of the lake, my line got caught in the prop. I ended up taking the nut off, to get the prop off, so as to not kill my flyline. Nice ol' leatherman worked great. Line got a little tweaked, but not fatally so.
Deva and his dad didn't have any more hits that day, apparently. Maybe I bring bad luck..