Please find following a fishing report and accompanying pictures sent in by Les Lockey from his late June trip to the loch with his pal Mike Warburton. Thank you to Les for providing this report.

Les and Mike’s Coldingham Fishing Report.

21st June – 27^th June 2025.

For our second trip of the year, Mike and I once again arrived in conditions more akin to the Mediterranean than the east coast of Scotland with temperatures hovering around 25 degrees, but despite this, our first evening sight of the loch immediately lifted our spirits as fish languidly rose all over the loch to a large Caenis hatch. However, our optimism was to be very short lived, as the next morning dawned with bright sunshine, high temperatures and a very strong wind that saw white horses rushing down the loch into Swing Gate Bay and as is often the case on the loch, it also seemed to be blowing in two directions at once, making Boat Jetty Bay just as rough giving us little option but to retreat to the comfort of our chalet.

Unfortunately, the strong winds proved to be a big challenge all week, and they were usually accompanied by sudden squally gusts that made life very difficult for any kind of fishing, let alone dry fly work with a 5 weight rod. Undaunted, Mike and I tried our best when conditions eased slightly, but strong winds and bright sunshine are never good bedfellows when trying to tempt trout to poke their nebs above the surface. We did however manage to catch a few fish between us while we were afloat, primarily on a black flat daddy or a green foam beetle, but numbers of netted fish were well down when compared to previous years.

On some days, we just fished from the jetty for an hour or so which generally proved more successful than being afloat. In fact, on Friday, with overcast skies and a very strong and gusty southerly wind, we decide to fish from the southern bank in our wellies. Casting was difficult, not only because of the conditions, but being in wellies, our back casts were very limited too, but thankfully the fish were close to the shore, as Mike discovered when a fish grabbed his fly almost by his feet as he pulled line off his reel to make his first cast of the day. We fished for 4 hours and landed some very nice rainbows but also lost numerous fish during play.  I finished the session with 8 fish while Mike took top honours with 9, but only after I gave him the killing fly – a tan flat daddy, which incidentally, he still hasn’t paid me for!