Fly fish Islay Our journey so far....
The Last three trips to Islay this year have been superb but this trip was very special for me for angling reasons....
I have been to Isaly now 7 times and the place is just a fishing heaven, its a small island and no water has any angling pressure of any sort, the locals love there fishing but there is so much water to go at its mind blowing....
My job is to look after the paying guests on the fishing side, woody sorts all the rest off the stuff out so i can just concentrate on getting the lads into catching there first wild scot trout....
Most the guests are new to the sport of fly fishing which is very rewarding for myself when they catch there first fish...some of the laughs i have had with these lads will stay with me forever...i just hope that i can capture the moment in words in this post... i plan to write about all this years trips in this post so its going to be more like a book so if you you get bored please have a rest and come back to it...
Herman with the running strike
This was lasts years guest herman, he did not really care for the love of fly fishing but loved all about the food side and catching his cook...his cooking was amazing so the plan was to take him out on the last day to try and get him a fish...now trying to teach someone to cast a fly rod who has never used one in a few hours is hard as it comes...
We were fishing finlaggen and the fish were rising to the duck fly with no care..ahh this will be easy!! i managed to get him casting a short line across the wind.... a big porpoise rise over his fly and i shouted 'strike' he then struck that hard the line just pinged !!
I sorted his striking out and then was into the next problem, he could not grasp the problem of keeping the line taught while into a fish and was hooking them but the slack line would just realse my barbless ltd sedge...i dont believe in grabbing the rod for them and landing it so i had to think hard..
Things were getting desperate and the day was drawing in...i could not get him to get the fish to stay on and i was starring down the barrel of a blanking guest...i did think of barbed hooks but hats not my thing so come up with a plan.....
Right Herman....when i shout strike i want you to just hold to line and walk out of the loch holding the line and the rod...hopefully this will give him a tight line and i could scoop the fish up easly from the water...
the rises had stopped and i was worried big time until a trout smashed his fly off the surface... 'strike herman'
Herman was so wired up from wanting to catch one he just sprinted out of the loch holding his rod in the air... oh fuck i thought as i stood with the pan net looking everywhere for the fish...i looked back at herman to see him literally still running up the grass out of the loch of at least twenty yards...
i then saw a small trout whip past me at 10 mph being towed by the sprinting herman!!! i dived at it with the net and missed by miles...
Herman was stil going and the trout went out the water and go towed a short way up through the grass!!! Stop Herman!!!! finally he came to a stop....
I ran over to the trout and herman came running down....i ghrabbed the trout a nursed it back into the water after its ordeal...me and herman jumped for joy around loch finlaggen as we had accomplished both our goals!! he had caught a WBT and i has helped him...phewwwww......
Simon the Dappler!!! 'a one off wonder'
The June trip saw a group from Chester who were a absolute class set of lads, all good crack, steady fisherman and rate piss heads!!
But then there was Simon!! different from the rest in many ways, he was the most dry bloke i have ever met and as witty as they come, never loud but always came in with a shout that had everyone in stitches..I had a instant liking to the lad but teaching him to fly fish was different gravy...i don't think he was that bothered about learning to fish but was there with his mates having the crack and loving it..
I did some casting lessons with all the lads and they all got the hang very well in the short time to turn the fly over...i do believe that if i can get a learner to turn a tippet over i promise i will get them fish...Then there was Simon...the only way i could describe it as a 'lion tamer' just like my group of top mates back home commo and his boys named there group this name but they have become very competent anglers of the fly...
Simon could remarkably cast four times with his rod before the line had got behind him!! so you could imagine the tangles he got in... he did manage to get it at times but a few hours break saw him revert to this 'lion taming' action... I dont think he cared...the water aroung him was like a whipped foam..
I took simo and siomon on the boat on loch skerolds, my elecy out board towing us at the top of a drift... i had taken a few of the lads out days before and brothers Peter and Carl had bagged up so i was well happy with my guiding...
At the top of the drift i had got simo casting lovely and bobbling a single dry of the nice choppy waves but then i had simon to my right in every tangle you could think of!! I had to think of a solution.......Dapping was the key, there was a lovely breese and i taught him to just high stick his rod and just let the fly bounce off the water..i showed him the method and he picked it up a sweet as a nut with no casting involved... i was now happy as we drifted through the centre of skerolds...
Simo hooked into a lovely fish that porpoused over his fly and played into ther fish of the week only for the kook to pull away, he was gutted and so was i but thats fishing and we just carried on..
Simon wa mastering his dappin technique and this is when fly fishing changed for me forever!!!
On my left i had Simo fishing my style of the dry, and simon dapping away to my right....
I sat in the middle watching there flys giving them the shout to strike....fishing all my life has given me something that i can see a split before any other fisherman, John Tyzack who guided me years ago taught me to fly fish to the highest level and i owe JT so much for my time spent with him learning the fly... He is ther most switched on fly angler i have ever seen and this has won him so much, I have course fished all my life before fly fishing and i believe i have picked up a second sence that i can see whats going to happen before it actually does...this might sound quite insane but some anglers reading this will know....
Before i could see i take i sort of knew it was going to happen and i would tell simo and siomon to become more focused as they were about to get a take, this happened all the way down the drift and i shocked myself to how many times i was right...i am not 'giving it the big un' but later in the week this feeling caught me my fish of a lifetime, a sea trout I just knew was going to take...
Back to Simo n Simon
I was watching Simons fly and saw a huge boil as the fly was inhaled below the surface....i looked across the Simon and shouted my usual 'strike!!!' he just looked straight across at me and simo with a shocked look on his face!! two seconds later i shouted at him to strike again!! still nothing as he just looked at me... after around ten seconds i shouted agiain 'strike'
He did nothing and just kept looking across at me...by that time the fish had spat the hook and i asked Siom why he did not strike? he just shrugged his sholders and said nothing....
Further down the loch Simon was getting so many takes it was unbelieabl;e , simo could not get a single take and was fishing just the way i had told him....But Simon was dapping and absolutely gettting smashed all over the place with his new method!
I told Simo to fish the dapp like Simon as this was so effective but strangely he could not get a single look at the fly!!
I had both of them dapping the fly but only simon was taking getting takes... it was very strange indeed, i studied both there methods and thjey were identical..
I kept shouting strike to siomon as his fly was getting hits all over the place but he continued to just look at me like i had gone insane!! and do nothing....
Siomon saw a fish rise infront of him and said...'look at that little fucker'!! unaware of it rising to his fly seconds later his rod bent around ans sheers panic set in as his rod looped over!! He put his rod in a position where i have never seen!! down beside the boat reached behind him... this was his first ever fish and i knew it could be the last of the week so i jumped to him to help him...
I managed to get him in some sort of order and slipped the net under the fish with a big sigh of releif...i said well done and lifted the net to show him his catch and looked into the net to see the fish not there!!! i looked up to see that simon had lifted the trout back out the net and it was 6ft in the air dangling \at the end of his rod tip!! I had never seen anything like it and we all fell about the boat laughing our heads off after finally getting the fish in safely and returned...
The madness didi not end there as simo had still not had a touch dapping but the complete learner Simon was hooking them everywhere!! This drove me insane and i could not see why...
Back out the house later i sat down with the group and they all fell about laughing at my story with Simon...
I come to the conclusion that Simon had some body twitching disorder and therefore he was presenting the fly like no other normal person could!! His fishing the dapp was just subline and he had not got a clue what was happeing but it worked...
I asked him about why everytime i shouted 'strike' he just looked at me like i was mad!!
It turned out that he had never picked a rod up in his life and did not know what strike meant!!! no wonder he looked at me like a twat evertime i shouted 'strike'...
Simon sat there and looked totally satisfied as he tucked into his fresh fried trout, he knew himself he could sit back and relax for the week and give me a deserved rest..
whisky was caned that night and Simon had a new name that will stick with him for ever ...........
THE DAPPLER....
LOCH GORM
Loch Gorm is a huge loch that used to be part of the sea in islay, this means the water is rich in a abundant of fly life and the fish grow to a size that is very much bigger to any scottch loch i know of..
I have fished it from the bank on a few occasions and had some good results but nothing from what i experienced on this day....
My mate Richy Morris joined us for a few days on Islay and flew in from Glasgow aiport..
I go back quite a while with Richy, he is anther one of John Tyzacks river trained lads like myself and i have spent many a jt trips with him paired up as we both have similar skills..
I owe alot to him for diving in the water head first to land me a huge Poland grayling !!! and spent nights in a dodgy Polish night club dodging fights!!
Richy offered to get a boat on loch Gorm for the day and Woody gave me the day off from guiding to go and fish myself...
We got the boat from a local farmer Jim, but the Islay estates hire a boat out for 50 pound a day...
The sun was bright but there was a huge chop on the water that had it looking perfect...
We set up 20 ft leaders with three wets, a bumble, peacock spider and a bibio...
We started to cast downwind in a true loch style fashion and within seconds Richy hit into a beauftul brown of around a pound...from that point we had the best fishing on a loch i have ever experienced...
We were ripping our flys through and hitting pods of trout and hauling them in at the same time!! At one point i had a double hook up and recast only to hook another double hook up...
The fish were catching were of a quality like no other browns i have seen anywhere, the colours were mindblowing as we admired each one we caught...
most of them nearing the 1lb mark which is soemthing else...
In four and a half hours we were well over the 100 fish mark and just looked at eachother is amazment..
Richy commented that he had fished all the top Ireland Lochs and today it had out shon them all..
We were pondering on staying for the evening rise but we had had enough fun on a loch to last us a lifetime..
back home sipping drams we wondered if we would ever catch fish like that again... Total living the dream to the higest level with a top lad and angler
Loch Gorm Canis dry heaven!!! never!!
Shaun and Mark were my boat partners on Gorm on the june session and after my tails of the day with Richy Morris they were all eager to have a piece of it, so was i and i wondered if this magical loch would be so kind to me again..
The first day we went was a nightmare with howling gale winds colouring up the water and outboard engine problems made huge problems so we only fished for one drift and called it a day...
The next day Islay estates were so kind to let us have the day for free after the bad weather the day before...today was totally different with a lovely breeze and warm overcast..
Shaun and mark were now turning over a tapoured leader well enough to give them a three fly set up, Shaun decided to fish my single LTD sedge which had done so well for him earlier in the week...Mark fished a team of wets...
It wasnt long before mark got ammonst his first wbt of the week and seeing his face was a picture as he played into these hard fighting fish...
Shuan was doing very well using the single dry and slightly scatted was getting him savage takes...
Woody was out with Pete and carl on the other boat...we wound them up by shouting YES!! making out we were hauling them out...they joined us on our drift and even drifted in front of our drift!! we had a ace time with all of us hitting pods of fish at the same time.. we took the cool box full of snapin and drams, i was feeling worse for wear by 3 oclock by necking stella and whisky on the boat..hearling abuse at woody and his boys on his boat.. good crack u just cant buy...
In the evening we counted around 40 trout that we had caught, shaun catching a absolute wacker on my ltd sedge...a pristine trout as good as i have ever seen... while unhooking the fish his dropper was taken from under the boat and he handlined another in... see pic..
The lads on my boat were over the moon and i was buzzing for them, but there was one last thing i wanted them to experience...'the evening rise'....This is my favourite time in any fishing i have done and explained to the lads that it could be amazing...
The wind flattened off to a flat glass loch and we just sat and waited for the gorm evening rise i has heard so much about..
It did not let us down as pods of trout started to sip under the suface, the rise form was very shy and left a boil...they were oviously taking a emerger of some sort...
I looked across to see Mark and Saun covered in freshly hatched canis!!! oh no...now i explained to them that we might be going home early for the obvious reason of a huge canis hatch...
Saun said he was really hoping to get a fish casting to rises and i had to think of a plan..
There was only one way, get the trouts attention as it hit the surface, a huge ltd sedge smashed on its nose and hopefully Saun would feel the buzz of dry fly fishing...
To my amazement it did the trick and I watched Saun smash into a rising trout... Landing it in the boat he turned to me and said 'that's my best fish of the week' !I could not agree more! I knew this lad had dry fly in his veins like many of us...
There is so much more to come and my next blog post is another heart pounder!!!
Keep on the dry
Nice one
Glen
Glen Pointon Electrical Contractors
Tel 07973951352
01782303564
Niceic approved contractor
D107173
I have been to Isaly now 7 times and the place is just a fishing heaven, its a small island and no water has any angling pressure of any sort, the locals love there fishing but there is so much water to go at its mind blowing....
My job is to look after the paying guests on the fishing side, woody sorts all the rest off the stuff out so i can just concentrate on getting the lads into catching there first wild scot trout....
Most the guests are new to the sport of fly fishing which is very rewarding for myself when they catch there first fish...some of the laughs i have had with these lads will stay with me forever...i just hope that i can capture the moment in words in this post... i plan to write about all this years trips in this post so its going to be more like a book so if you you get bored please have a rest and come back to it...
Herman with the running strike
This was lasts years guest herman, he did not really care for the love of fly fishing but loved all about the food side and catching his cook...his cooking was amazing so the plan was to take him out on the last day to try and get him a fish...now trying to teach someone to cast a fly rod who has never used one in a few hours is hard as it comes...
We were fishing finlaggen and the fish were rising to the duck fly with no care..ahh this will be easy!! i managed to get him casting a short line across the wind.... a big porpoise rise over his fly and i shouted 'strike' he then struck that hard the line just pinged !!
I sorted his striking out and then was into the next problem, he could not grasp the problem of keeping the line taught while into a fish and was hooking them but the slack line would just realse my barbless ltd sedge...i dont believe in grabbing the rod for them and landing it so i had to think hard..
Things were getting desperate and the day was drawing in...i could not get him to get the fish to stay on and i was starring down the barrel of a blanking guest...i did think of barbed hooks but hats not my thing so come up with a plan.....
Right Herman....when i shout strike i want you to just hold to line and walk out of the loch holding the line and the rod...hopefully this will give him a tight line and i could scoop the fish up easly from the water...
the rises had stopped and i was worried big time until a trout smashed his fly off the surface... 'strike herman'
Herman was so wired up from wanting to catch one he just sprinted out of the loch holding his rod in the air... oh fuck i thought as i stood with the pan net looking everywhere for the fish...i looked back at herman to see him literally still running up the grass out of the loch of at least twenty yards...
i then saw a small trout whip past me at 10 mph being towed by the sprinting herman!!! i dived at it with the net and missed by miles...
Herman was stil going and the trout went out the water and go towed a short way up through the grass!!! Stop Herman!!!! finally he came to a stop....
I ran over to the trout and herman came running down....i ghrabbed the trout a nursed it back into the water after its ordeal...me and herman jumped for joy around loch finlaggen as we had accomplished both our goals!! he had caught a WBT and i has helped him...phewwwww......
Simon the Dappler!!! 'a one off wonder'
The June trip saw a group from Chester who were a absolute class set of lads, all good crack, steady fisherman and rate piss heads!!
But then there was Simon!! different from the rest in many ways, he was the most dry bloke i have ever met and as witty as they come, never loud but always came in with a shout that had everyone in stitches..I had a instant liking to the lad but teaching him to fly fish was different gravy...i don't think he was that bothered about learning to fish but was there with his mates having the crack and loving it..
I did some casting lessons with all the lads and they all got the hang very well in the short time to turn the fly over...i do believe that if i can get a learner to turn a tippet over i promise i will get them fish...Then there was Simon...the only way i could describe it as a 'lion tamer' just like my group of top mates back home commo and his boys named there group this name but they have become very competent anglers of the fly...
Simon could remarkably cast four times with his rod before the line had got behind him!! so you could imagine the tangles he got in... he did manage to get it at times but a few hours break saw him revert to this 'lion taming' action... I dont think he cared...the water aroung him was like a whipped foam..
I took simo and siomon on the boat on loch skerolds, my elecy out board towing us at the top of a drift... i had taken a few of the lads out days before and brothers Peter and Carl had bagged up so i was well happy with my guiding...
At the top of the drift i had got simo casting lovely and bobbling a single dry of the nice choppy waves but then i had simon to my right in every tangle you could think of!! I had to think of a solution.......Dapping was the key, there was a lovely breese and i taught him to just high stick his rod and just let the fly bounce off the water..i showed him the method and he picked it up a sweet as a nut with no casting involved... i was now happy as we drifted through the centre of skerolds...
Simo hooked into a lovely fish that porpoused over his fly and played into ther fish of the week only for the kook to pull away, he was gutted and so was i but thats fishing and we just carried on..
Simon wa mastering his dappin technique and this is when fly fishing changed for me forever!!!
On my left i had Simo fishing my style of the dry, and simon dapping away to my right....
I sat in the middle watching there flys giving them the shout to strike....fishing all my life has given me something that i can see a split before any other fisherman, John Tyzack who guided me years ago taught me to fly fish to the highest level and i owe JT so much for my time spent with him learning the fly... He is ther most switched on fly angler i have ever seen and this has won him so much, I have course fished all my life before fly fishing and i believe i have picked up a second sence that i can see whats going to happen before it actually does...this might sound quite insane but some anglers reading this will know....
Before i could see i take i sort of knew it was going to happen and i would tell simo and siomon to become more focused as they were about to get a take, this happened all the way down the drift and i shocked myself to how many times i was right...i am not 'giving it the big un' but later in the week this feeling caught me my fish of a lifetime, a sea trout I just knew was going to take...
Back to Simo n Simon
I was watching Simons fly and saw a huge boil as the fly was inhaled below the surface....i looked across the Simon and shouted my usual 'strike!!!' he just looked straight across at me and simo with a shocked look on his face!! two seconds later i shouted at him to strike again!! still nothing as he just looked at me... after around ten seconds i shouted agiain 'strike'
He did nothing and just kept looking across at me...by that time the fish had spat the hook and i asked Siom why he did not strike? he just shrugged his sholders and said nothing....
Further down the loch Simon was getting so many takes it was unbelieabl;e , simo could not get a single take and was fishing just the way i had told him....But Simon was dapping and absolutely gettting smashed all over the place with his new method!
I told Simo to fish the dapp like Simon as this was so effective but strangely he could not get a single look at the fly!!
I had both of them dapping the fly but only simon was taking getting takes... it was very strange indeed, i studied both there methods and thjey were identical..
I kept shouting strike to siomon as his fly was getting hits all over the place but he continued to just look at me like i had gone insane!! and do nothing....
Siomon saw a fish rise infront of him and said...'look at that little fucker'!! unaware of it rising to his fly seconds later his rod bent around ans sheers panic set in as his rod looped over!! He put his rod in a position where i have never seen!! down beside the boat reached behind him... this was his first ever fish and i knew it could be the last of the week so i jumped to him to help him...
I managed to get him in some sort of order and slipped the net under the fish with a big sigh of releif...i said well done and lifted the net to show him his catch and looked into the net to see the fish not there!!! i looked up to see that simon had lifted the trout back out the net and it was 6ft in the air dangling \at the end of his rod tip!! I had never seen anything like it and we all fell about the boat laughing our heads off after finally getting the fish in safely and returned...
The madness didi not end there as simo had still not had a touch dapping but the complete learner Simon was hooking them everywhere!! This drove me insane and i could not see why...
Back out the house later i sat down with the group and they all fell about laughing at my story with Simon...
I come to the conclusion that Simon had some body twitching disorder and therefore he was presenting the fly like no other normal person could!! His fishing the dapp was just subline and he had not got a clue what was happeing but it worked...
I asked him about why everytime i shouted 'strike' he just looked at me like i was mad!!
It turned out that he had never picked a rod up in his life and did not know what strike meant!!! no wonder he looked at me like a twat evertime i shouted 'strike'...
Simon sat there and looked totally satisfied as he tucked into his fresh fried trout, he knew himself he could sit back and relax for the week and give me a deserved rest..
whisky was caned that night and Simon had a new name that will stick with him for ever ...........
THE DAPPLER....
LOCH GORM
Loch Gorm is a huge loch that used to be part of the sea in islay, this means the water is rich in a abundant of fly life and the fish grow to a size that is very much bigger to any scottch loch i know of..
I have fished it from the bank on a few occasions and had some good results but nothing from what i experienced on this day....
My mate Richy Morris joined us for a few days on Islay and flew in from Glasgow aiport..
I go back quite a while with Richy, he is anther one of John Tyzacks river trained lads like myself and i have spent many a jt trips with him paired up as we both have similar skills..
I owe alot to him for diving in the water head first to land me a huge Poland grayling !!! and spent nights in a dodgy Polish night club dodging fights!!
Richy offered to get a boat on loch Gorm for the day and Woody gave me the day off from guiding to go and fish myself...
We got the boat from a local farmer Jim, but the Islay estates hire a boat out for 50 pound a day...
 |
| Richy class angler and mate |
We set up 20 ft leaders with three wets, a bumble, peacock spider and a bibio...
We started to cast downwind in a true loch style fashion and within seconds Richy hit into a beauftul brown of around a pound...from that point we had the best fishing on a loch i have ever experienced...
We were ripping our flys through and hitting pods of trout and hauling them in at the same time!! At one point i had a double hook up and recast only to hook another double hook up...
The fish were catching were of a quality like no other browns i have seen anywhere, the colours were mindblowing as we admired each one we caught...
most of them nearing the 1lb mark which is soemthing else...
In four and a half hours we were well over the 100 fish mark and just looked at eachother is amazment..
Richy commented that he had fished all the top Ireland Lochs and today it had out shon them all..
We were pondering on staying for the evening rise but we had had enough fun on a loch to last us a lifetime..
back home sipping drams we wondered if we would ever catch fish like that again... Total living the dream to the higest level with a top lad and angler
Loch Gorm Canis dry heaven!!! never!!
Shaun and Mark were my boat partners on Gorm on the june session and after my tails of the day with Richy Morris they were all eager to have a piece of it, so was i and i wondered if this magical loch would be so kind to me again..
The first day we went was a nightmare with howling gale winds colouring up the water and outboard engine problems made huge problems so we only fished for one drift and called it a day...
The next day Islay estates were so kind to let us have the day for free after the bad weather the day before...today was totally different with a lovely breeze and warm overcast..
Shaun and mark were now turning over a tapoured leader well enough to give them a three fly set up, Shaun decided to fish my single LTD sedge which had done so well for him earlier in the week...Mark fished a team of wets...
It wasnt long before mark got ammonst his first wbt of the week and seeing his face was a picture as he played into these hard fighting fish...
Shuan was doing very well using the single dry and slightly scatted was getting him savage takes...
Woody was out with Pete and carl on the other boat...we wound them up by shouting YES!! making out we were hauling them out...they joined us on our drift and even drifted in front of our drift!! we had a ace time with all of us hitting pods of fish at the same time.. we took the cool box full of snapin and drams, i was feeling worse for wear by 3 oclock by necking stella and whisky on the boat..hearling abuse at woody and his boys on his boat.. good crack u just cant buy...
In the evening we counted around 40 trout that we had caught, shaun catching a absolute wacker on my ltd sedge...a pristine trout as good as i have ever seen... while unhooking the fish his dropper was taken from under the boat and he handlined another in... see pic..
The lads on my boat were over the moon and i was buzzing for them, but there was one last thing i wanted them to experience...'the evening rise'....This is my favourite time in any fishing i have done and explained to the lads that it could be amazing...
It did not let us down as pods of trout started to sip under the suface, the rise form was very shy and left a boil...they were oviously taking a emerger of some sort...
I looked across to see Mark and Saun covered in freshly hatched canis!!! oh no...now i explained to them that we might be going home early for the obvious reason of a huge canis hatch...
Saun said he was really hoping to get a fish casting to rises and i had to think of a plan..
There was only one way, get the trouts attention as it hit the surface, a huge ltd sedge smashed on its nose and hopefully Saun would feel the buzz of dry fly fishing...
To my amazement it did the trick and I watched Saun smash into a rising trout... Landing it in the boat he turned to me and said 'that's my best fish of the week' !I could not agree more! I knew this lad had dry fly in his veins like many of us...
There is so much more to come and my next blog post is another heart pounder!!!
Keep on the dry
Nice one
Glen
Glen Pointon Electrical Contractors
Tel 07973951352
01782303564
Niceic approved contractor
D107173
Glen Pointon 07973951352
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