Wild Fish from Wild Places
This year’s Lough Corrib mayfly trip wasn’t about me. It was a proud day as I was finally surpassed in angling success by my ageing angling protégé Alan. There’s no disguising that over the week...
For me my first outing to Talybont heralds the Spring. The clocks have leapt forward, lighter evenings are here and the drabness of another wet and weary Winter can be put behind us.
South Uist’s West Ollay – I’m determined that one day this will be my favourite loch. This should be the place where my dreams come true.
Against the odds she’d almost made it home. Two thousand miles of Atlantic peril lay behind her.
My love affair with Corrib began shortly after my traumatic break up with my first true love, the sea trout lochs of Sutherland.
Fishing Loch Stack in the early 1970’s I judge myself to have been amongst the lucky ones. Privileged to witness Stack in its final years as a great loch.
It was a pretty grim day, only lightened by a stunning close up encounter with a Golden Eagle and the strange phenomenon of the shells.
It would be around 7:30 and the switch had just been flicked. Only five minutes earlier the gentle ripples had been frustratingly undisturbed but now in ever increasing numbers rising trout were dimpling the surface in all directions. The rise had begun.
Nothing exotic or freakish just a once in lifetime fish from a highland loch, the fish I’ve spent a lifetime and a lot of cash chasing.
It’s August, which for me means a year of waiting is almost over, a return to South Uist is due. Fishing South Uist has many wonders, but for me its greatest are its sea trout – because it still has them, and has managed to escape the salmon cage imposed carnage inflicted on their mainland brethren.
I can’t remember the start. I can’t remember learning. I have always fished and always will.
