As we arrived at Drumlanrig castle the clouds came over and the rain came on. We went up to the castle as I had to get my picture taken for the Galloway country fair website as I had won 10 casting competitions at the fair with the prizes being a days fishing. We then went to Morton castle where it was raining with a south wind which didn’t make much difference to the fishing as the fish where high in the water. We made our way down to the loch. I started off on the bank wading just so I could try out the sonik sk4 waders which did the job superbly. I was using my new sk8, 10 foot with a sonik floating line loaded on a sk4 reel; I put a team off three flies on (gold humongous, Kate McLaren and an orange blob,) which I used all day.

I was on the dam first looking up at the beautiful castle where I started to hit fish very quickly on the humongous fished on a really slow figure of eight retrieve. I ended up with four fish from the dam. I then moved round to the other side of the castle where I didn’t touch a fish, but I saw plenty over the other side – something that happens to all fisherman. It was about 13:00 when we got picked up by my dad on the boat and went in out of the rain for lunch.

After lunch I went on the far bank from the castle and headed straight to the point where I had seen the fish rising earlier. My first cast I covered a rising fish and it took the  Kate McLaren on the drop. The fish took me right out to the backing and put up some fight. When I finally got it in it was 6lb and I just managed to get it in my net!