Mayfly and thunder storms

Well yesterday was an "interesting" outing to Loch Lunndaidh.

Headed up in the early afternoon with my son for a few casts on a last minute decision.

Was slightly worried the high temperatures and bright sunshine of the day before might have pushed the fish down and put them off feeding. I couldn't have been more wrong!

We arrived at the Loch to a light breeze towards the dam, and a good ongoing hatch of huge yellow mayfly. The trout were absolutely smashing the mayfly as the emerged in huge splashy rises.

This could be epic.

I hastily set up a 4 wt for Fionnlagh with a single crippled mayfly pattern on it, and ginked it well.

He's not learned to cast yet so I put it out for him, and told him to hold on tight.

Literally ten seconds after it hit the water a trout of just over a pound hit the fly from below like an Exocet missile, jumping clear out of the water. No need to strike! Lol.

What followed was a fun filled hour of slowly drifting static dries and he had another 8 fish.

Then the sky went dark.

Very , very dark.

A huge rumble of thunder followed, and with it came a barrage of what Forrest Gump would call "fat rain "

The joys of the Highland summertime!

Now, as much as I love flyfishing, the middle of a hill loch waving a carbon fibre pole about in a thunderstorm is not a smart place to be, so we packed up as quickly as we could and headed home, soaked to the skin but happy nonetheless.

We kept a couple of fish to eat, and the stomachs were bursting with small cased caddis in gravel /sand shells, buzzers, and the big yellow mayfly, mixed feeding indeed.

You'd need a size 6 or 8 to match this hatch accurately! Beautiful big mayfly.

Tight lines.