Fishing Adventures in South Uist: A Tale of Sea Trout

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.

The build-up is tense, especially in this drought stricken year. Two weeks to go and the occasional checking of SEPA rainfall figures becomes ever more frequent and increasingly desperate. I’m now scanning the charts and graphs daily; July has been dry, but with seven days to go the rain begins to fall, the angling Gods are with us. Storm Floris arrives and dumps two inches in a day, I have visions of salmon and sea trout gleefully forging their way up Uist’s west coast streams.

But wait – Floris brings 90 mph winds to the Hebrides, the machair lochs with their sandy floors will be churned up and unfishable – will they settle in time? And so my mental torture goes on.

On the first morning my ignorance is brought into focus as I stand by the Roag boats, watching the high tide thrusting surges of brackish water up into the loch. The sea is less than half a mile downstream, and with these high summer tides it’s obvious the fish can make it into these low lying lochs in virtually any weather. All that worry for nothing.

Then I was to be proved wrong again. It seems that the Gods are no longer with us, they have turned their faces against us, wreaking their revenge by making us experience six days of meteorological misery.

They have decided to send us a visitation from the three angling Horses of the Apocalypse. First wind, or a virtual complete lack of it, second the sun, unchallenged by clouds for whole days, and third, that rarely seen apocalyptic nag, as an alternative to sun, days of fog and low cloud!!!

Luckily this was a trip with a difference, in that it was meant to be just as much about an initiation into the angling world as about catching fish. We had brought fresh blood, I almost wrote young blood but Maurice is seventy and pretty much a fishing virgin, his previous efforts being confined to a few days Irish dapping accompanied with some desultory casting of a fly on Corrib.

Dapping rod cast aside, this was to be the week when Maurice was destined to become a fully-fledged fly fisherman.

He showed huge early promise catching two finnock on his first afternoon. His trip was already made, it was touching to see how something so small could make an old man so happy!

Despite the weather stacking appalling odds against us, Maurice never slacked his efforts with either a rod in hand or when cheerfully manning the oars. We fished hard and long, and Maurice never uttered a single word of complaint against our madness, he was becoming as obsessed as us.

However, I did find myself developing a certain unease at his evolving, very personal, casting style. 

The three of us on this trip play golf together, and two of us are in awe of Maurice’s prowess on a golf course. He’s competitive, strong, hits it miles, and is always open to a discussion on the (sporting) merits of the ladies of the WTA and LPGA tours. To put it simply, on the golf course he’s a man’s man.

So I ask myself after a week of flogging Uist’s finest lochs under my, though I say it myself, excellent tuition, how has he developed such an effeminate persona with a fly rod in his hand? Maurice’s casting style has something of the Larry Grayson, “Shut that door” flounce about it. Dare I say the word limp comes to mind!

For a relative beginner he has an extraordinary ability to remain untangled, but a seeming reluctance to give that extra bit of oomph to his casts to make the fly line truly sing through the rod rings. In desperation, I’ve set him homework to watch some YouTube videos before our next outing!

We caught very little, but it didn’t really matter. Even with the succession of impossible conditions the time flew by, the most heart warming moment on yet another fishless day would be Maurice asking the time and when being told half past three replied “Really? I thought it was just after one!” – that comment made everything feel fine – Maurice gets it – it’s about much more than catching fish, it’s as much about the gentle immersion into nature, the pleasure taken in just being here.

I have to admit Uist isn’t the prettiest fragment of Scotland, first impressions aren’t as arresting or immediate as the stunning highland west coast or the rocky outcrops of Sutherland and Harris. Initially it can seem a bleak and harsh landscape, but the longer you spend here, the more nature seeps into your very being.

We stayed on the shores of Loch Eynort, a narrow sea loch mid-way up South Uist’s eastern coast.  Fifty yards outside our front door was our very own colony of seals, who would spend their days scattered, immobile, lying on the various seaweed strewn rocky islets. They didn’t normally provide much entertainment, they would just lie lugubriously above the tide awaiting their next fishing expedition. 

As we ate breakfast the dreaded flat calm had extended to our sea loch. The torpor was suddenly shattered by one of the seals taking off at a rapid rate of knots, porpoising its way across the mirrored waters. In its wake it left a succession of huge outwardly expanding concentric rings resulting from its long arching lunges which sent it repeatedly plunging in and out of the previously unruffled surface.

It must have covered two hundred yards before running out of sea and coming upon the shore. Why would it do this? I guess because it could, I think it was simply having fun.

On the lochs, whenever you lifted your eyes from the water, you were likely to witness an ornithological event. Pretty much each loch we fished provided its own twitchers’ delight.

Grogarry had its ever present skeins of Greylag Geese dotting the sky high and low, near and far, their wedge shaped squadrons providing a honking background soundtrack to the day.

Just over the wall from where we parked the car at Roag, a couple of yellow beaked Whooper swans lazed by the river, pecking indolently at the streamside reeds.

On Fada, a Hen Harrier worked its way along the shore, and as we drifted onto the loch’s tiny island, a flurry of Lapwings exploded, forming a kind of Lapwing murmuration painting patterns in the sky.

High above Schoolhouse we were witness to a pair of distant soaring, wheeling Sea Eagles. But the best was saved till last.

Our final outing was on Bornish. This was the day of the worst fog, and for much of it we couldn’t even see where water ended and land began. Out of the murk, a huge presence emerged, circling low over our boat.

On these trips you seem to spend quite a bit of time convincing yourself you’ve seen a far off Golden Eagle, when most of the time it’s just a distant Buzzard. Then when you really see one, there’s no discussion, no doubt, they are immense and magnificent – and this one certainly was.

He was as close as I’ve been to any Eagle, and even gave us time to train our binoculars on him before ascending ghoulishly back into the gloom.

Of course, above all we were here for the fish. True, you still have the chance of an occasional salmon, and last year I was even lucky enough to catch one, something I thought I would never do again, but to me that’s not what makes South Uist special. What constantly draws me back is the combination of those oh so special sea trout and the magnificent trout of the machair lochs.

I know, though decimated, some of our rivers still have depleted runs of sea trout, but Uist is the last place I know where you can drift a highland loch with a realistic chance of coming across a proper fish, by that I mean three pounds and more.

Despite fishing conditions being near impossible during our three days on the sea trout and salmon lochs, we saw a lot of big fish, caught one, and even had two huge sea trout leap within a few feet of our boat. The large sea trout still seem to be here, strangely it seems to be the two pound fish that are in short supply, but hopefully I’m wrong and we were unlucky and they just managed to elude us on this trip.

As far as the trout of the machair lochs are concerned, they are magnificent specimens in fin perfect plump condition, and in the case of West Ollay, some of the residents are unbelievably large. Fittingly of such quarry, they are not easy prey, but that only increases their allure. Needless to say we caused them very little disturbance this year.

And so to the weeks’ fishing which brings me to Alan, the third member of our group, he’s Mortimer to my Whitehouse. Alan is my other ageing protégé of a few years standing; he’s caught lots of fish, but is yet to land a special one.

My two priorities for this trip were first to catch Maurice a fish on the fly, box ticked, and second for Alan to catch a really good fish.

There is a reason why Alan is yet to land a big fish, despite having hooked several. Put simply, it’s because he will not do as he is told!! To illustrate my point, I’ll relive our Wednesday morning dialogue on Fada just after he connected with what was obviously a very nice sea trout.

“I’ve got one!”

“Alan, let it go.”

He clamps his finger ever tighter on the line. Slightly higher pitched from me.

“Let it go!”

Now I’m vaguely hysterical.

 “Give it line!”

Snap – silence – bollocking – no remorse. He’s like Lexi, my border collie, he doesn’t have the guilt gene. To be fair, a couple of days later on Schoolhouse he lost a similar fish, and this time, as far as I could see, he was blameless. I even told him so!

Having got stuck into the other two and to make sure that at some point in the future the pair will start talking to me again, I feel it only right to report my own failings. The first day on Roag was difficult, but I saved the day in the late afternoon with a lovely four pound sea trout. I’d just returned a very small brownie that had stripped the tinsel off my Black Pennel; given the lateness of the hour and the lack of movement I couldn’t be bothered to change the fly, and carried on regardless. Of course, this mangled mess proved to be the successful fly. Why do I spend so much effort trying to perfect the fly tying art, when a damaged ragged relic such as this works just as well?

Really, my only other angling highlight was rising and missing a fish on West Ollay. This loch is my nemesis, given the size of trout in Ollay, this was likely to have been a lost opportunity for something memorable.

Another year slips away, and all too soon we’re back on the ferry. For all Calmac’s failings, I love these ferries, as ancient and unreliable as they are. On the trip back I always spend a lot of time on deck, I tell everyone it’s to spot the dolphins that often come surfing towards the ferry’s wake or to get an elusive sighting of one of the Minke whales that frequent the Minch. But it’s more than that, it’s to drink in the last vestiges of the landscape, to replenish my soul to sustain me through another dreary English winter before I can hopefully return north in the Spring.

As we approached Uig all three of us leaned over the ferry’s handrail to be treated to a spectacular cloud inversion. The sea lay below with Skye above, the Black Cuillens’ ridge poking skyward. 

So to the moment of truth.

“Well, Maurice, would you come again?”

 Without missing a beat.

 “Yes – what’s not to like about messing about in a boat?”

“And your favourite moment?”

A second of contemplation.

“The seal was good, but it had to be the Golden Eagle – wow!”

We’re already booked for next year, and I’m hoping that Maurice and Alan will have joint best moments as they land one of those amazing sea trout.

Fishing in South Uist – Useful Links :

To Book Fishing contact South Uist Estates or the South Uist Angling Club