I had arranged to visit the Frandy Fishery through Adrian Haldane, the new operator, in order to publish a fishery review on ScottishTroutFishing.com. I was more than happy to carry out this assignment, because, as a young boy living in Fife, I had learned my fishing at The Frandy (Lower Glendevon Reservoir) and on the burn below the dam, and I was shocked to recollect that the last time I had fished there was during May 1968 - 40 years ago! Of course back at that time The Frandy was strictly a brown trout water and nowadays it is a modern put-and-take fishery, regularly stocked with rainbow, blue and brown trout

Accompanying me on the trip was my regular fishing partner Tom, who had never fished The Frandy and didn't even know where it was. However, it's safe to say that Tom will never forget The Frandy, after the day's sport we ended up having and I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't sleep all night with a broad smile of contentment fixed across his face

We arrived shortly after 8.00am for a 9.00am start and after having a look at the conditions (Fig 1) we were warmly met by the fishery manager Ken McCutcheon, who provided Tom and I with a coffee and a full update on how the Frandy had been fishing, where to fish and what the recently successful killing patterns had been. The lodge was very comfortable and clean (Fig 2 & 3) with decent toilet facilities and a modest shop selling a range of popular flies and snacks. The lodge is on an elevated site with a magnificent panoramic outlook, taking in the reservoir and the steep and dramatic hills beyond and is also very handily placed for access to the boat jetty (Fig 4) below, and has a generous car park alongside. As Tom and I were tackling up for our boat session, a regular visitor, travelling from St Andrews, was getting ready to fish from the bank and during a brief chat it was obvious that this angler absolutely loved coming to the Frandy Fishery. It soon became clear that we were the only boat session booked for the day and that the other anglers present were all regulars looking forward to a bank session

Ken recommended that we try our luck along the south shore between 2 buoys, shown on the map below as two red dots. Initially, I didn't take Ken's fly recommendations on board and started off with a 2-fly setup on a 12 foot leader using a slow sinking glass line, with a gold-head gold ribbed haresear (Fig 11) on the point and a gold-head montana nymph (Fig 12) on the dropper. We made our way to the furthest of the two buoys and lined up for our first drift.  Almost immediately, after a fierce take, I had a fish of just over 2Lbs on the GRH and landed it after a decent fight. This was followed up very soon after with a similar sized fish on the montana nymph. Then Tom hooked and landed a fish and his second fish of the morning followed on quickly after that. The SW wind direction, shown by the green arrows on the map, was making our drifting very difficult, as we were continually being blown offshore into the deeper water. During the next few hours we persevered at this location between the buoys, with 6 fish landed, one of just over 4Lbs to Tom (Fig10), a few fish lost before netting and a decent amount of takes missed. During this time, there were a few bank anglers fishing between the 2 buoys (Fig 5) and all of them seemed to be getting into fish on a regular basis

We then decided to let the wind take the boat on a drift  right across the reservoir, to give us a break from the continual shifting we had to do to keep on station between the 2 buoys. This drift didn't produce any takes and Tom suggested we go to the top end of the reservoir (red arrow on the map), just to have a look if nothing else. Previously, I had been talking about the top end of the reservoir to both Ken and Tom, as I had great memories of how beautiful a spot it was. Ken had indicated that the top end of the reservoir was the place to go for brown trout. Little did we know that "fishing heaven" was literally just around the corner

Just before moving onto the "Fishing Heaven" part of the day, there was a strange occurrence to report, involving a booby. One of the fish landed in the area of the 2 buoys had, at first glance, a booby impaled in its side. On closer inspection, the booby was actually dangling from the anal vent of the fish, attached to 4 feet of leader, with 3 feet of the leader hanging from its mouth (Fig 13). The booby had amazingly passed through the trout's digestive system and the hook was as black as the ace of spades. The booby complete with leader was gently pulled through the fish and it was released unharmed, hopefully to fight another day

We motored up to the very top of the reservoir, grabbing our first bite of lunch on the way, whilst passing through a beautiful and dramatic channel with imposing hills on either side. Right at the top, where the reservoir comes to an end, there are 3 burns running into a slightly wider basin. They are the main feeder burn from the upper Glendevon Reservoir and 2 much smaller burns, one on either side of the uppermost part of the basin. The view on Fig 6 was taken looking back down the reservoir, with the boat in the middle of the mouth of the main feeder burn. The right hand burn can be clearly seen just before the first point and the left hand burn is at the first notch on the left hand shoreline, just below a dark patch of growth. All 3 burns can be seen on the map above near the red arrow

Before coming up to this end of the reservoir, we had both put on a yellow dancer (Fig 14) due to advice from Ken, combined with one of the bank anglers having success with this lure earlier in the day and I put an orange blob (Fig 15) on the dropper. We decided to have a drift down from the main feeder stream into the basin and just then we both spotted a small rise off to our left. We were convinced it was a small brown trout but started fishing anyway. On my second cast I had a tremendous pull and was into a decent rainbow. No sooner had I netted it than Tom was into a fish. It was 1.30pm and for the next 2 hours we were submersed in our own version of "fishing heaven". It was not the quantity of the fish that brought us both a great amount of sporting pleasure, it was the variety of the takes and fights and the quality of the fish we were catching. The fish that were taking us on almost every cast were somehow different to those we had landed at the other end of the reservoir, both in terms of condition and power. Within a matter of minutes we had to debarb our hooks and go onto catch and release. This resulted in many losses, due to the leaping and tail walking demonstrated by of some of the fish. Fig's 7, 8 & 9 show one little beauty displaying its acrobatics before coming to the boat to be safely released by Tom. We had a great variety of takes including gentle dabs, follows right up to the boat, violent grabs during retrieval, downward pulls on the hang, long distance boils on the surface as the flies hit the water and sideways line zipping runs. It was actually very tiring and we certainly didn't notice the incessant rain coming down on us during this frantic period. It was getting near to the end of our session time of 4.30pm and I managed to finish it earlier than desired by breaking my rod with a schoolboy error, on bringing what was to be the last fish of the day to the net. And I had left the spare rod in the boot of the car almost 4 kilometres away in the car park. We had brought 36 trout to the boat during this wonderful session on the Frandy Fishery, with the vast majority having been safely returned. 19 to Tom and 17 to me and not one under 2Lb in weight. A day to remember? - you had better believe it

Summary

The Frandy Reservoir is a very beautiful place to go fishing and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who hasn't been, to give it a go. Tom and I will certainly be back fairly soon to test its reputation as a prolific top-of-the-water fishery. For the bank angler, there are vast areas of easily accessible fishing spots, with safe wading and plenty of fish within easy casting distance of the bank. As was usual, when asking the opinion of regular anglers on successful tactics and fly patterns, a wide spectrum of advice was forthcoming, with everything from dry flies and buzzers through to traditional wet flies and vivid lures having their own particular success stories

The facilities are first class with a comfortable lodge and shop, high quality boats and engines and a spectacular 4 kilometre long reservoir nestled in a most beautiful part of the Glen of the Eagles. The pricing and ticket structure has obviously been designed to cover almost any angler's situation and Adrian Haldane, with his fishery manager Ken McCutcheon, have plans for continual improvements to the Frandy Fishery and from what I've seen so far they will definitely be successful for the future

Please visit the fishery website for more detailed information or give Ken McCutcheon a call

www.frandyfishery.com  -  Tel 01259 781352