Advantage! The Fish

Conditions weren't ideal in fact it was outrageously silly to be out fishing in the warmest day of the year at Hillend. As I walked across the jetty to prepare the boat I noticed  a big shoal of perch basking in the sunshine. Regardless of the blazing sun I went afloat at Hillend about 5pm and headed right up to the west end of the loch. It wasn't long before I got my first bite.... A bloody cleg bit me on the side of the face and it nipped.
I drifted down to the island but the drift was extremely slow as there wasn't much wind. Nothing doing in that drift I manoeuvred the boat over to the Eastercroft bay where I hooked and lost my only fish of the session. It was a brown trout of about 1lb in weight which was fooled by a wee silver bodied wet daddy but as I was getting my net ready to land him he managed to throw the hook, agggggh! but I'm counting it!
Encouraged I fished on for quite a bit in this area but I wasn't really drifting because of the lack of wind I just had to keep motoring the boat around until I decided to try somewhere else. But before I departed the Eastercroft bay I felt my line go heavy but something wasn't quite right because as I retrieved my line I knew this wasn't a fish. Would you believe that the day after a historic day at Wimbledon I hooked a decaying damn tennis ball! from Hillend Loch.I suppose I deserved that for fishing a lure! Advantage to the fish I got the hell out of there and went over to the Big Moss Hole by this time much to my surprise the wind had picked up a bit so I managed a good drift right down past the Shields burn but no success fish wise. I then tried various drifts at the back of the woods before trying the island in front of the woods. Before I finished I tried the boathouse bay but again without success. It was about 10.30pm when I hooked the boat to the jetty.
A very disappointing session in which I lost and hooked one fish and only saw about half a dozen rises which was surprising as there was quite an abundance of fly life around. Ah! well hopefully my trip to Skye next week will be more productive.