With a very late spring and strong winds battering the islands the previous week, there was no doubt that the Kirbister Loch would struggle living up to its reputation as a “beginner’s water”… From the information that could be gathered, Harray had been very cloudy lately, the competition on Hundland had been won by fishing “on the stones” where the water was just clear enough for the fish to see the flies and the near gale force winds had not spared Kirbister either.

On the Wednesday and Thursday, the Kirkwall Grammar School pupils were out on their annual angling trip, part of their end of term activities and they tackled the east shore of the loch. The going was tough and the Kirbister brownies were shunning flies and bait alike resulting in baskets which were certainly not what you would expect from this lovely little fishery at this time of year.. The shore which was chosen on the day of the competition was the west shore even though the wind direction was yet again uncertain, just like last year, and what was supposed to be a WNW ended up more like N…

At 10:30, after the 13 pupils from KGS and the Stronsay School gathered by the shore and were instructed about the rules and safety, the young fishermen started spreading along the bank; the fish were active and a few opportunistic fly-fishers made the most of it, like Craig Stout who landed two fish in the first ten minutes! However, this bonanza was to be short lived and soon after, the trout disappeared, not to be seen again for the rest of the day! It was interesting to see our young anglers using an array of different techniques: bait with bubble-floats, flies using spinning tackle and torpedo floats, flies on fly tackle, etc…

At 2:15, the whistle was blown and it was time to put away the rods and head for the weigh-in where Stuart Topp, the OTFA secretary, had set the scales. The competitors were split into 4 categories depending on age and fishing technique: Marcus Scholes was the winner of the Junior Bait section for the second time and his basket included a beautiful 1lb2 sea-trout. Logan Harcus won the Junior Fly section, Gareth Holmes won the Senior Bait section and Craig Stout was the Senior Fly section winner for the second year, with yet again a basket of 7 fish!

Congratulations to the young fishermen who had to show perseverance to land a few of those moody brownies! Thank you to all the helpers, volunteers and leaders: Mr. Erskine, Dr. Hall, Mrs. Heggarty, Jim Pettit and Stuart Topp. We also want to thank our sponsors for the prizes: WS Sinclair’s, Stockan’s and William Shearer’s.

Another angling trip is planned next week for 13th & 14th June on Harray and Kirbister with a group of anglers from the Stronsay School (including some S5s who recently transferred to KGS).

Mr.P