 Willie the Ghillie
END OF SEASON FISHING REPORT
Another season has now passed at Loch Leven and the word encouraging, which was used in most of our summer reports, seems to be a very appropriate word.
All the age classes of fish have been represented in the catches since the very start of the season, April saw several fish in the 4lb+ region, May started with a fish at 5lb 7oz caught on a small buzzer, and a steady stream of 6lb + fish were recorded almost on a weekly basis. The biggest fish of the season was caught on September 29th by David Murdoch; it weighed 7lb 4oz and was in beautiful condition.
Large fish are very nice to see and catch but just as important are the small fish. Juveniles have also been a very welcome feature of the catches at the loch this past season, and I must thank the many anglers who return these lovely wee fish (and some of the very big fish!) for their very wise consideration for our future sport at Loch Leven.
Another very encouraging feature of the trout is their condition, from the very start and right up to the end of the season, the condition of the fish have been first class.
Water clarity appears to be improving on a year to year basis. The clarity peaked in early June at 4 meters but the main clarity was very rarely lower than 2 meters in the main season.
Good clarity allows good light penetration and prolific weed growth follows, weed growth is very important for the diversity of food needed in a wild brown trout fishery. Large amounts of Corixa have been present all season, and large shoals of stickleback also in evidence courtesy of the large weed bed environment!
Buzzer hatches (chironomid) still very much in evidence, although I have to say the hatches of buzzer at the loch this past season have been a little less prolific than the previous two seasons, apparently buzzers “do this” at other venues – no one seems to be able to put a finger on the reason for good/bad buzzer years. The ‘red leg’ or ‘heather fly’ which is a terrestrial fly, was quite prolific at times in August and the trout do ‘respond’ to a hatch of these rather nice looking flies.
Another very encouraging feature this season has been the spread of fish over the loch, the area East of Reed Bower all the way to the East end of St Serfs in the open water held a lot of fish, but right at the end of the season the deep water off the North Shore saw very large numbers of fish of all sizes!
As the winter approaches the mature fish will run the burns to start the whole process of regeneration up again, we do monitor this operation in the streams to try and get some idea as to the state of our fishery at this very important time of the year. Last November I saw very encouraging numbers of fish in all the streams, and it would appear that the juveniles have done pretty well also – courtesy of a rather wet summer.
Cormorant numbers this September/October appear much lower than in previous recent years, in fact as I write in early mid October the cormorant count is less than half of last years! The most probable reason for the reduction in cormorant numbers is an upturn in their own main food source at sea however we won’t be too sad to see less of these pretty voracious predators at Loch Leven. |
