Wild Fish from Wild Places
Loch Leven, an evening last August. Perhaps it would be a good time to admit that the biggest wild brownie I’ve caught is a mere four pounds. Given the time, effort, and let’s be honest, straightforward cash I’ve expended trying to catch a really big one, you could say that a Corrib four pounder is a pretty poor effort – you may have a point.
Loch Caladail, a setting where the fish are the stars. Muscled slabs of silver, flanks highlighted with a hint of gold. Athletic, feisty and sometimes enticingly large.
A delightful diversion, a secret pleasure. Dapping appeals to the eternal child in every fisherman the one that will spend hours dangling a crab line off a Cornish harbour wall or even longer messing around lifting stones in a Hebridean rockpool.
This one is exotic and undoubtedly the biggest trout that I have lost, except I didn’t lose it, my incompetence meant I didn’t quite get that far.
The Lower Duart was a gem, and to my dad an obsession.
I say ‘was’ because, although it is still undeniably stunning and a hugely popular beat, in the past it was on an elevated pedestal of being one of the most wonderful, special and unique places to catch a Scottish salmon.
The pollution of the River Wye, the same Wye that inspired the works of Turner and the writings of Gilpin – how has it come to this? Let’s start by playing a game of...
It always starts with a map. In those early days it would be the huge one taking up half a wall in the hotel lounge, all the Scourie hill lochs laid out for after...
My recruitment began at Bisham Abbey where I was meeting my best mate who was on a sports physio course. Weirdly I was introduced to Mike as he came off the netball court having...
Loch Dionard – if I was given the opportunity to spend my last twenty minutes on this earth in any place I desired it would be here, no hesitation, no doubt, it would be here. At the start of a drift just off the tiny islet and onto the rocky shore where salmon lie a mere rods length from the jagged loch side stones.
I love a bit of harmless poaching. It has to be with a fly rod, not impact anybody else’s days fishing and preferably be from a bit of water owned by some absentee English aristocrat.
