The Only Lake

After a few days of dealing with things and getting over jetlag, an old mate invited me to join him for an evening's pike fishing on the Lake of Mentieth. Of course I said yes. It's probably 20 Years since I was on The Lake, and I'd never fished it for pike. Unfortunately for us, the weather has been all over and Wednesday was the only window of good weather with another front coming in with more cold and rain for today. So we knew the fishing would be tough. It was. A couple of follows, a dropped fish each, and one little hammer handle for Darren. Not really surprising as stocked trout waters can be tough at the best of times, never mind with the unstable air pressure systems.

But difficult fishing isn't bad if you've got a good boat partner and nice surroundings, and there are few places with nicer surroundings than Mentieth. It's bang in the middle of the Trossachs National Park and the scenery is stunning, and certainly a far cry from Japan. It's teeming with quality trout and there were loads rising to small midge and others jumping clear after daddies, some of them absolute submarines, which had us wishing we'd brought trout gear instead of ten weights... we felt a bit better about that when we got in to the hut and the guys who'd been trout fishing had also struggled with only a couple of fish between several rods which seemed totally at odds with what we'd been seeing but there you go. The highlight was watching the resident osprey taking a rainbow about 3lb, we'd been enjoying watching them but seeing the successful dive after a trout is something a bit special.

I might make it back out on the Lake before I return to Japan, hopefully with more stable weather. But realistically I'll probably just head to a local water near my house to be more sure of a fish or a few, even if the surroundings, nice as they are, aren't quite as special.