Scourie Hill Lochs – and the Perfect One

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 dinner debate.  Then the maps became your own with their carefully guarded secrets ticked in blue as to where the big fish lay.

For a while I was in the magic circle of the dedicated few who would trade each other’s intimate secrets of the potential lairs of specimen trout. To enter “the circle” you had to have knowledge to “sell” which normally meant disclosing some barren lochan which you had previously seeded with a few small trout.

The logic was that these fish were landlocked with no spawning stream, without the ability to breed these few fish could grow large in their isolation.  How puzzled the first time angler must be catching eight ounce trout on the main loch of a beat when staring down from the hotel bar wall is an encased four pound goliath.  Little did they know the reality was that this trophy fish most likely came from some tiny lochan at the far flung extremity of the beat.

When I was young I was good at fishing these lochs.  I was fit, could cover a lot of ground with their blue ticks and I knew how to fish them.

Each day’s route would have been planned during the depths of the previous Winter with the endless dark hours spent poring over maps, those precious blue ticks and dreaming of what else lurked amongst those contours.

Summer would arrive and I would set off into the hills.  In those days I used to take the direct route over hillocks and hummocks, rocks and outcrops. From painful experience I’d learnt that skirting round these things meant getting pushed off course and if not lost at least confused.  It’s amazing how the same piece of water can look completely different when approached from a different direction.

After some dodgy map reading and a few unplanned detours I would make it to my first loch.  No rush, sit back and quietly watch. Then set up, the approach was simple. A single dry fly of my own creation, a size 10 very heavily palmered black bumble, no ribbing or tail, just  like a mini dapping fly.  I have never found any need to change from this one pattern, I know it works.  Flat calm or even better in a howling gale still the same fly.

Watch again.  Very rarely you would see the rising fish you wanted but for the most part there would be nothing.  Then crawl towards the water on hands and knees, casting from yards back, still on my knees. Wait, just the occasional twitch of the fly. Slowly fish the loch with a few careful casts, if at all possible still on  my knees. 

My Dad wasn’t quite as dedicated and once he did the hands and knees thing but as he was about to deliver his first cast he felt his knees getting very wet – lacking my level of commitment he jumped up and from virtually under his feet a disturbed three pound brownie sending it forging off into the middle of the loch – lesson learnt.

A second lesson came from my sister when she was very young. My Dad would get a bubble float and attach it to a dry fly on a foot of leader.  He would cast it out and let my sister fish.   Trout would take the fly five even ten minutes after it had been cast. Patience and stealth,  you don’t need to keep casting and flogging a piece of water.

Half the fun of these outings was fishing the unticked, unexplored lochans.  The first task was to find out what was in them, if it’s a loch where you catch nothing it becomes interesting and worth a visit in the future.  If you catch something small you move.  Everything was about the pursuit of that one good fish.

Tragically my approach to these lochs isn’t what it once was – and I still try.  I can still walk to them but not as many ticks get covered in a day, I can get down on my knees and carefully cast but trying to move without getting up is hard and getting up off my knees is even harder!

So what makes a perfect hill loch.  Firstly it should be fished with a perfect companion.  They should be as excited as me about the day to come, female, beautiful, loyal and as with all Border Collies four legged. Through the years I have been blessed with Tess, Tash and now with Lexi, unfortunately the only Border Collie ever bred who doesn’t like water!

The loch must be off the beaten track high in the hills and a challenge to even find.  It should be a semi-secret place only known to a few.

I will have probably taken a few wrong turns before I crest a rocky rise to see the loch below.  I’ll drop down to the loch having to skirt the damp pools of bog cotton swaying in the breeze.

This perfect loch isn’t that small, it’s not one of the “stocked” lochans, this one has naturally spawning fish well above the average size with the outside possibility of a fish of over 2 lbs, for me the benchmark for a special wild brownie. It’s probably sitting atop an isolated outcrop of limestone that’s giving the trout some unusually rich alkaline inspired feeding.

The loch will have variety, with have several arms and inlets with the occasional large bay.  It will have islands some of which if I’m willing to risk getting slightly wet I can just about get to.  There will be reed banks and patches of lily pads. 

Some of the fishing will be easy, off gently shelving shores, whilst at other times I’ll be fishing off high banks with vertical rock slabs diving deep into peaty depths.  As I squat in the heather I’ll notice one of those big hairy caterpillars that if you touch leave tiny sharp darts in your fingers. It will be crawling past a round leafed sundew busy trapping midges.

From its irregular shore I’ll be able to cover most of the water, no boat needed here.

In one corner high above a deep inlet will be a badger set from where with the west wind at my back I can amuse myself by tripping a dapping fly over the waves.

The fishing will be difficult so you know that one missed rise will likely be the end of your chances for another year.  If you catch a fish it will be unusually plump and heavy shouldered for a hill loch trout, it will be deep and golden with bright red spots.

It will have a rumoured resident monster fish of Nessie like fame and legend, rarely seen and always just out of casting distance cruising around the loch’s big bay.

On one unique July afternoon  I will sit on my favourite rock, rod forgotten, as below a pair of otters cleave through the water spiralling in play oblivious of the watcher above.  The day is clear and the sky is blue, I will lift my eyes to the horizon rent by Ben Stack’s peak and in the distance I can make  out Quinag’s magnificent massive silhouette. This place and this day will give me truly special for ever memories.

As you may have guessed this perfect loch doesn’t only sit in my imagination but it’s real or at least a fusion of two stunning Sutherland hill lochs.  They are with me every day as on my study wall I have a large framed photo of Tash lying on that favourite rock ears pricked gazing intently over the water perhaps like me scanning the waves for that elusive rising fish.

(First Published In Trout and Salmon – April 2025)