The weather forecast wasn’t great, but I took a chance and arrived at 17.00 to find an empty lake. Obviously nobody else was brave enough to chance it.

The wind was strong but as it happened, the direction was such that the corner where I normally fish was in fact the only sheltered spot. After a short while a small bream was hooked. It leapt out of the water and proceeded to ‘skim’ across the surface. I guess this is where the term skimmers comes from. Not being someone who normally fishes for these little fish I hadn’t experienced this behaviour before. I went on to catch eight, the majority all exhibiting this skimming. There were even two that got off, only to leap out of the water and skim off as if they were still on the line. It was weird behaviour indeed.

The only interlude to the bream was one small tench of about half a pound, which at least gave a reasonable account of itself.

After an hour the rain started and became quite heavy. My old Barbour fishing coat is in need of reproofing and after a while I felt the dampness seeping through the hood and shoulder area. Fortunately there was brighter sky behind the clouds, so I sat it out and sure enough things brightened up for a while. However, the rain returned and looking over the hills behind me it seemed that we were in for a persistent spell of wet weather. I decided, therefore, to call it a day just after 19.00.

Having got back to the cottage and hung out all my wet gear it did in fact brighten again around 21.00, but I would have got very wet indeed waiting for that bright spell, so I think I made the right decision. A bit of a pity though, as that was probably my last chance to fish the lake before returning home.