Scotland Tour September 5th to 27th 2023.
There are times when I truly despair!
5th September we drove up to stay with Cecil D on the Spey at Grantown and fish a couple of days on Tulchan A beat with John Anderson the ghillie.
We arrived at the beat to find the water level off the gauge, the air temperature rose to 31c degrees according to my car and water temperature 20c!
Lovely as it always is to return to the Spey, two days rather hopeless but hard effort for no reward.
Then it was off to Caithness, for a mixture of sight seeing, sea fishing and a day on the Thurso which I had never fished. Sea fishing: One crab caught by Jacky, otherwise nothing. Apparently the seals of which there were numbers everywhere, have eaten all the fish.
On beat three of Thurso in dead low water I did manage a couple of stale Grilse 3lbs and 5lbs and lost another but it was a shadow of what I suspect this river can produce.
Anyway, then off via Mallaig to South Uist. I had last visited the islands in about 1968 aged 12 with my father. Wow what a difference 55 years has made. Then, barely half a dozen cars on the whole place. Now hundreds and every other one a camper van. But still virtually no infrastructure. Two hotels, a co-op or two and just one pub (that we found open) and modern houses springing up everywhere. Along with it, remnants of habitation past, falling down croft cottages, abandoned jetties, boats and all sorts of rubbish scattered or dumped here and there. I found it all a bit sad. The islands and their wildlife are so beautiful and to see the cost of human intervention in such stark contrast was just that. Sad.
Anyway what you really want is a fishing report… So how did we do there? Well, leaving behind the heatwave on the mainland, we arrived to the remnants of Hurricane Nigel! It blew and rained almost all of every day and night for the entire week. Undaunted, I thought this could bring in some fresh sea trout or salmon for my two days, one on Loch Fada and one on Loch A’Barp. But no. Perfect conditions, a good wave and I had remembered my drogue, and nothing, not even a sight of one. Just the occasional small brownie.
In between, we fished a hill lock and were grateful for the few Brownies there, in particular Jacky’s first.
Sea fishing was also a complete non-event: the lovely sandy beaches on west coast were swamped by dead and dying weed washed up – apparently every year in late August. The smell was very unpleasant, even if you had wanted to or been able to fish.
Apparently this weed was once a valuable, natural resource harvested for such products as soap and cosmetics. It used to employ numbers of Islanders but the industry has long since closed down. The main employer now being the fish farms which, instead, have devastated the estuaries on which they are positioned and killed most of the natural sea-bed flora and fauna on the east coast. Hence on the few areas we could cast a sea-line. Nothing not even a crab.
One highlight though was that our cottage owner worked on the boats supplying the fish farms with Wrasse (which eat sea-lice and so replace chemical agents used previously – some progress at least.) and he bought us a couple of beautiful Lobsters caught in their nets. Yummy!
I left the Islands unable to boast of the magnificent 6lb sea-trout my father had caught all those years before, wondering only if it had been a case of “you should have been here last Tuesday”.
From Mallaig we then drove down to Innerleithen on Tweed for my final three days salmon fishing for this year on Fairnilee.
I normally fish it in late October/early November but decided to tack it on to the end of our journey instead, for this year.
All was looking very promising after a lift of water in the previous week and several fresh fish recorded. But…
On Sunday the heavens opened. 43mm rain recorded at Moffat on Sunday night and a 5ft 6ins dirty brown flood greeted our arrival at the beat on Monday morning. Hopeless.
Tuesday water down to 2ft 6ins and though still too high really, at least clear. Nothing for us after a very hard day trying in a nasty wind. Several pods of fish were seen moving through, but stopping for no-one on our side. They got one stale grilse on the Yair on the other side of the Yair boat pool – a bit they seem to permanently fish like heron’s never moving.
Wednesday: Water 1ft 6ins and clear. Perfect! Except… joy, Hurricane Nigel would be arriving with us by lunchtime and was already lifting the river upstream. I gave it everything I could and fished hard until lunchtime.
One of our rods got a fish from the Put – 12lbs. Brilliant! Where there is one there are more. I fished on in the rain, all through Lower Rocks Calfshaw Burn and Branders. Perfect water and a great taking spot by the Wellingtonias. But, nothing. not even a tug. And soaked for my troubles.
Three weeks, eight, not inexpensive days salmon/ sea-trout fishing and as many days in the salt, for a crab and a handful of wee Brownies.
I wanted to add photos here but my phone now won’t talk to my computer for some reason. As I said earlier: There are times when I truly despair!
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