Loch Leven – Memories of the Evening Rise, a Golden Time now Lost

Loch Leven gifted the world the art of loch style flyfishing and the export of its spectacular trout.

To my left in a less than knee-deep bay, dozens of fish shoulder to shoulder were tailing, their thick wedged tails inclined to the cloudless antipodean sky, snouts rummaging for snails amongst the gravel. I doubted if there was a fish under two pounds amongst them, most of them were much bigger. This was on a plateau above the Walls of Jerusalem in remote central Tasmania – how lucky was I!

The only link I had to this alien but wonderful place was that these wondrous trout may have had the same origins as my early fishing career.

It was possible that these trouts’ direct ancestors had spawned sometime in the late 1890s in Loch Leven’s North Queich before their ova were transported to this piscatorial outback. 

As a ten-year old, I only knew the Loch through tales recounted by my dad and by the carpet of trout he and his mate Andrew would lay out on our lawn on their return from their trips north. This wasn’t a time of today’s occasional Leven leviathans, our lawn would seem to be covered by countless pea in a pod pound trout.

There were tales of huge eighteen foot clinker boats with baby telegraph poles as oars. Oars so big that each boat had two boatmen, and even with this human heft, Castle Island was often as far as they got. 

The few original boats left today still have the remnants of those legendary oars. The advent of the outboard motor brought their demise, resulting in them being butchered, sawn in half, leaving them with their immense weirdly out of proportion blades. Tightly wound rope sleeves protecting them from the chafing of the original open metal post rowlocks.

These boats may now be well over a hundred years old, but they are still the best craft ever put afloat from which to drift and cast a fly.

I gradually became more familiar with the Loch through my dad’s old, folded map, the one with the faded green cover. Unfolded, the map revealed lines of tiny ant like italicised depth measurements marching across the drifts.

From Alice’s Bower to Scart Island, from the red buoy over the sunken island to Reed Bower, past Mary Queen of Scots Castle Island prison, off the Factor’s Pier and across the Burleigh Sands, past the point of St Serf’s, over the Hole of Inch and across the wonderfully named Thrapple Hole.

Then there was my dad’s fly box, white plastic compartments with a clear perspex hinged lid. Packed with tiny “wee doubles,” nothing bigger than a 14. For the top dropper Kingfisher Butchers, never changed and always the best. Why? Has anyone caught anything on a Kingfisher Butcher anywhere else? I haven’t, and I have certainly tried! I wonder if it imitated the profusion of perch in the loch, but why so small?

Next would be be the selection of olives – Burleigh, Mcleod’s, Greenwell, Teal & Green and Whickhams. Last, but not least, there would always be a few Soldier Palmers tucked away in the back corner.

Dad would tie up casts with the traditional Loch Leven set up of four flies spread over a nine foot cast, which was then attached to his double taper floating line with a figure of eight knot. His rod was a split cane Lennox, which he eventually managed to lose over the side on a Sutherland loch.

By my early teens I had started to fish the Loch for one Summer’s evening each year, the inviolate stopover from the annual Scourie fishing holiday. Late afternoon in the local woollen shop for my mum, staying at the Greens Hotel and spending the evening on the Loch.

Everything about those evenings was unique to Loch Leven. The first task was to pay the necessary respects to the redoubtable, and frankly scary, Mrs Faulkner, who took your money and allocated you your boat, more importantly you had to show her due deference to protect your prospects for future bookings.

Out of the office and onto the pier, where the serried fleet shouldered and chafed at the gunwales, bows facing each other across the square harbour. Bluey grey hulls topped off with black trim. Black numbers roughly painted on the bow, stern and back seat of those clinker heavyweights. 

It was turnaround time between the day and evening sessions. Forty or so boats being refuelled. Speak to Bob, Dad’s favourite boatman who used to man the heavy oars for him in those early years. Bob’s advice on drifts and flies was always treated as gospel for the night, even if discerning that advice through Bob’s thick Fife accent could be the first issue of the evening.

The next challenge was whether Dad could get out of the harbour with his dignity and rod intact. We would always be in the first wave of boats to leave, which meant manoeuvring through a host of jostling craft, seemingly coming from all directions with their precious split cane rods poking over the bows.

To be fair, most of the others were locals used to these boats and engines – it was a bit more of a test if it was your one annual outing. To give him his due, Dad never actually damaged anyone’s rod, and we usually got away with near misses and a few unintelligible Fifian invectives being hurled at us.

We would always buy two hot Scotch pies each from Mrs Faulkner, and with the relief of clearing the harbour it would be time to eat the first of them whilst still warm – in true Scottish fashion I can still see the hot fat leeching through their paper bags.

Then a quiet first hour, perhaps moving the occasional fish, but normally the loch drowsing before the main event.

I would be in the bow casting as I was taught over my left shoulder. Am I the only person left who does this? Bow over the left shoulder, stern over the right, flies never meeting in the middle. It was drilled into me as soon as I held a rod, I still do it religiously as a courtesy to my boat partner, but nowadays I seem to be alone. Then there was the cliché “bow for fish, stern for comfort,” I’m not sure if it’s true, but I’ve taken many a fish casting off the bow across the waves.

  

You had at best an hour, and oh how frustrating that hour would likely be! You were pretty much guaranteed to move fish, but that didn’t mean connecting with them – coming short was what we called it – rising fish just missing your flies time and time again.

These were good fish, gone by now were the pound fish of the sixties, these seventies trout were much more powerful, averaging twice the weight of the previous decade. Having them come to your fly, then often following as you retrieved, almost climbing out of the back of the boat, trying desperately to keep your flies in the water, only to see the fish flash and turn away at the last moment, was the definition of frustration.

Remember, these were free rising big wild fish coming to you on the surface, mainly taking your top dropper, often right under your nose, as you lifted your flies clear. For me these were probably the most intense angling experiences of my now fifty-year obsession of handling a fly rod, and how I miss them.

You would catch fish, but normally one, two or three, and you would always feel it should have been so much more. 

As the clock ticked towards nine, the switch would be turned off, and the last hour would be spent casting for the odd fish, and forlornly reflecting on what might have been – again!

I have a favourite memory of the rise, and it has nothing to do with catching fish. From our Summers’ fishing in Scourie we had a friend, Willy Dickson, who was some sort of editor at the Glasgow Herald. He could be best described as old fashioned Scottish gentleman. One year we agreed to meet up and fish Loch Leven for the evening.

As usual I was in the bow, with Willy fishing from the middle seat – in these vast boats that was quite normal. The witching hour had arrived, trout had begun to rise, as had my expectations along with my pulse, it was always the way.

Willy had laid down his rod, and was carefully extracting a crystal tumbler from a beautifully inlaid wooden box, all leather and velvet inside. A second and third cut glass were gently removed, followed by the gin bottle and the tonic. 

I expectantly cast, suddenly through all my concentration and focus on my Kingfisher Butcher tripping across the waves, I heard a clink. I glanced to my right, Willy had laid down his rod and was carefully extracting a crystal tumbler from a beautifully inlaid wooden box, all leather and velvet inside. A second and third cut glass were gently removed, followed by the gin bottle and the tonic.

We had to stop. We were from Pendle in Lancashire; this wasn’t what we did – except on this evening, when we sipped our gin & tonics and made polite conversation whilst the rise went to waste all around us. A lovely and genteel memory.

As the light faded into darkness, it would be over for another year and we would turn homeward amongst the moonlit phosphorus wakes of other boats making their way towards the guiding light seemingly floating high above the harbour entrance.

The harbour would be a frenzy of returning boats. Boatmen leaping into the stern, frantically spinning and reversing engines whilst standing precariously balanced on rear seats. Expertly stacking the boats in line before lifting the engines away.

There would be snatched conversations with Bob, no time to stop, and then it was over. Conversations in the shed and the car park, sharing of hard luck stories, and seemingly always finding that person who had drifted beyond everyone else to find the catch of the night.

Then back to the Greens, lying in bed reliving the highlights, contemplating all those missed chances and what might have been – there was always next year.

Except there wasn’t. True, the fish had got bigger, and there was still the evening rise, but the signs of the catastrophe to come were already there to be seen, in the rise of the algae and the beginnings of the agricultural pollution that was to destroy the old traditional Loch Leven. The decline was at first gradual, before becoming precipitous towards the horrors of stocking rainbows in the world’s greatest natural brown trout fishery.

There were lost decades before the Loch clambered out of the mire and emerged again as a great but different Loch. Now it’s a world of buzzers, deep lures and huge, beautifully conditioned trout, but it’s not the Loch Leven of old, with its abundant varied fly hatches and wonderfully temperamental fish.

Was the old Loch Leven better? For me, yes – I’ll leave it at that.

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