A successful day fishing for our first brown trout from the White Loch using the ‘three fly’ trace recommended for us after enjoying a fine Scottish breakfast and ending up with five fish before finding Dunlin and Hen Harrier nests and spotting Short-eared Owls. Then back for a meeting with Alan Brooks to draw a line under our planned sporting warden
We were first to breakfast again and anxious to get out and over to the White Loch to try catching some trout. Our original idea was to get up and out really early but we had been persuaded that the trout rose with the fly that hatched a little later. It was a fine 'Scottish' breakfast that we had before we went on another sunny day. Ian McGreggor tied us a couple of casts for good luck and we set off and were soon tackled up and in position. Nigel took the bank again and I the boat. After one attempt at drifting across the loch, I could see that the trout were actually rising off the lee bank where there was a constant flow of insects onto the water and so I moored up my boat and joined him there.
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I was soon into my first fish. It took the upper, or 'bob-fly' which was a 'buzzer' and, taking care to play it out as I had no landing net, I was soon pulling it out and into the boat as our first Brown Trout from the White Loch. Nigel was soon joining in with a fish and then I hooked another one, but this time it fell off as I tried to lift it out leaving me cursing at the lack of a landing net. I then got into an enormous tangle with my trace and, after missing half an hour's fishing to no avail, swopped over to using the trace that I had tied myself the previous night which seemed equally successful. In all, I caught two fish and Nigel three and I should have had another three but for the lack of a net.
The wind got up and the hatch finished and the trout stopped rising and, try as we would, we could not get any more fish to bite and so made our way back to the car to eat the nice packed lunch that the hotel had prepared for us. Next to the loch, we found the nest of either a Dunlin or Common Sandpiper, with four tapered dun eggs spotted brown and near to it, we saw either a stoat or weasel playing amongst the wreckage of the boat-shed, inquisitively coming out to peep at us as if unused to humans. We spent the afternoon fishing at first and then walking around the Thormaid Estate. I found my trees in good condition and growing well; though they did have some caterpillars that were worrying me.
We took the guns and Nigel joined me for a walk down the Fairy Glen where a female Hen Harrier was protecting a nest nearby. Then we walked all the way down to the bottom boundary of my estate where I had never been before and saw more evidence of the other birds of prey. There is a virtual epidemic of Short-Eared Owls encouraged by the large number of voles multiplying at this stage of the young plantation. On the way back, we located the Hen Harrier's nest and counted six bluey-white eggs which was a large clutch.
To the car and home for our evening meal, first meeting Alan Brookes by arrangement for a drink to discuss his work for us. His tale was a list of problems and excuses and we concluded that he would not be able to make a go of being an independent, sporting/protection warden and so not be able to do our work for the future. A nice meal of Red Deer venison with an even nicer bottle of Medoc to wash it down with and then, very tired, to bed after very many early mornings in the last week. Our trout were wrapped up and put into the deep freeze overnight.