Staff Arrest Report Cold Start – Hotspots
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| Trout on Snot Fly |
“It’s a good day for a little drive I guess”, the sarcastic comment I got as I scraped the car in the dark on Friday morning. You’ll miss it if you don’t go and it’s going to be a beautiful clear frosty day so at least there will be great views of the Trossachs around Loch Menteith to photograph.
On a fairly icy approach road I had to slow down and appreciate the scenery but I hear the fishing has been very good lately so hopefully the camera is focused on the overwintered Trout. My colleague Stevie Francis gave me some hotspots to target and recommended fishing under the bung. I prefer drifting and pulling wets in big water but you better listen to good advice so I had two rods set up, one for the traditional, the other a more modern approach.
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| Flat Calm |
Setting out over a glassy surface there is little chance of setting up a drift, but it means I can see the fish moving which does wonders for your confidence. In a flat calm if you want to cover the water you have to let the engine do the work and catch fish around a big loch. Give it a few hours each, try to stay patient while fishing static but don’t just wait it out while your rod ices up especially when there are fish on the feed. A Snot Fly and Cat Bug were the recommendation, so I put my bung at 12ft with two fly teams.
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| Snot Flies – not exactly traditional |
I saw another angler dangling a fish while I was warming my hands in a mug of coffee and cleaning the rod eyes so I was sure I had one. In the second or third place I got a twitch, a dip and hit a fish… for a minute before it released itself but it was enough to keep me fishing. Getting into the zone of slowing everything down, letting it settle and fishing really static I moved into that bay and tried a few spots before swinging back and starting the hunt again.
Whether that gave enough sun to warm up a bit or the fish just turned on either way the blank was dead as some nice Rainbows took the Mojito Snottie. The pick of the bunch was probably over 5lbs and this time there was no time to strike as the indicator was buried and the fish took off. Neatly fixed, fully finned with a large tail used this excellent line removal from the reel. This is exactly why you’ll be getting yourself out of the cold and more than enough to justify the sunset photos on the way back to the boatyard before the nice little drive home.
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| Sunset Scenes |
Book a boat on Lake Menteith here https://menteith-fisheries.co.uk/online-booking/
Judging by the comments thread on our Facebook post they may not be for everyone but they are effective!
