A Club on the Wild Side

This is a story about club members, first published in Fly Fishing and Fly Tying magazine.

A Club on the Wild Side by Graham Brown

For many years my club, Caurnie Angling, has been more of a group of individuals rather than a full blown club, so a few of us decided to rectify this. A huge help with this was the building of a new oar shed/outbuilding that has been affectionately named the “Howff”

Most nights there can be found a gathering of the members wishing to chew the fat or tie a few flies. Every now and again we have a feast night with heart stopping levels of cholesterol consumed at the barbeques. We have been subsequently called the Caurnie Camper due to the fact we seen to be living in the Howff these days.

To further build the club we decided to have some outing away from our usual club water. A white board was put up in the Howff, for members who wished to, go to put their names down for the inaugural outing to the Lake of Menteith.

Once we had a full contingent an e-mail was sent to everyone with times and instructions.

To upkeep the good name of the club participants were asked to turn out in their best bib and tucker, false teeth properly secured and those with hair to have it brushed. Well that fell on deaf ears! A motley crew assembled at the boats wearing clothing that a scarecrow would reject. Our newest member Paul was sporting a pair of Saltire shorts and a dog eared T shirt!! A letter is being prepared by the secretary, addressed to his wife, to have a word.

Anyway boats were allocated and we prepared for the off. With a roaring of outboards, a few curses and one girly scream we were away. It is hope that the resulting Tsunami did little damage to the nearby village of Aberfoyle. I had drawn Lake newbie, Stephen as my boat partner. Having never fished with him before I was looking forward to a good night of congenial conversation, how wrong was I? Yabber yabber yabber he went on all night. Through gritted teeth I tried to answer all of his questions and queries but was unable to inform him who lived in every house that overlooked the lake. I manfully resisted the urge to apply my priest to the back of his neck to pacify him on several occasions! I have since received nomination for this year’s Nobel Peace prize. Well good old Stephen tried hard to entice a rainbow from the Lake. His patented “windmill” casting technique failed to put him among the fish but he did manage to hook his own behind with a rather large booby nymph. All the more remarkable was that he was sitting down at the time.

Mid-way through the night we endure a major thunderstorm, oh how I wished I had brought the chair from my kitchen, the last resting place of my waterproofs! Time flew and if we had caught another two fish we would have had a brace. So still rather moist we returned to the boat quay to see how everyone else faired. Alas we were two men down. Big Jim and the aforementioned Paul had broken down and had to be towed home. So finally the weigh in, Big Suggs walked it with 9 and sporting shared his prize of Davies superb Clootie dumpling with the rest of us lesser mortals. Another notable catch was by Edd who somehow managed to hook fair and square a rather large and aggressive eel on a hopper. So the inaugural outing of the Caurnie Campers was overall a great success and Carron Dam has been booked for next month, God help them all.