booked donalds orkney for two days at loch awe with high hopes of maybe catching my first ferox
monday 10th aug - pretty nice day and relatively calm waters , picked up 1 rainbow about a pound past the cages on a trolled fly line around lunch time , no more fish the rest of the day
tuesday 11th august - woke up to the rain , lots and lots of rain , trolled all morning round the islands up past the post office , down past donalds and away down the bottom end of the loch , fishing at every depth from 40ft up to the top , three rods out , 1 fly line , 1 deep diving lure and a small rapala on the downrigger , the rain kept coming and the wind picked up throughout the day , this only encouraged me to not give up decided to head back up to the islands about 3pm and picked up a nice pound and a half brownie again on the fly and once again spirits were high , back up the pass of brander where i did miss a hit on the downrigger twice , then we picked up another rainbow passed the cages on the fly it was now time to head in so decided to head to the north east bank and troll my wayback down to donalds with only three fish for two days , as we got towards the bank there was a good chopp on the water and in the last two miles towards donalds we picked up about a dozen nice brownies all around a pound odds , once again on the trolled fly , oh ye and a perch on the rapala , it just shows never to give up until the final gasp , and we didnt as i foul hooked another brownie on the rapala just meters from donalds , good cuple days on the loch though all in all , even though i didnt have any big ones , all good things come to those who wait eh , think mines is gonna be a long one
does anyone else troll fly lines while they are trolling rapalas and other lures ?

alot of folk troll lead core lines

I like the idea of trolling a large fly, the number of big brownies caught on ace of spades is amazing, I know James has trolled a huge monstrosity of a troling fly with success

a big saltwater or pike fly behind a trolling gang or flasher would be a good bet I reckon

was a gold humungus i had on most of the time , but ye something a bit bigger does sound like a good idea , think i'll try one of james's big trolling flys , i keep looking at it in my box but its never seen the light of day

The last minute fish is always one to be glad of, i was out on lomond on saturday with two anglers who had booked one of my "trolling days" we had fished all day with only perch to show for it and when it was time to pack up we did one more trip round Clarinch and as i was clearing the rods to pack up one of the downriggers fired off with a nice brown of 4/5lbs another two or three mins and that rod would have been pulled and we never would have got that fish.
One of the highlights of that day was a perch we had caught and released and as it was just getting its bearings and going to swim back to the deeps an Osprey came down and grabbed it (we missed seeing the actual grab) but it flew round the boat holding the perch while it was being harassed by a couple of seagulls who were trying to nick its meal.