I have to confess that I’m not a big fan of fishing small waters for salmon, not least because I am singularly unequal to the task. So those of you, who have chanced upon this particular piece seeking enlightenment, best think again and perhaps leave now if time is precious. Indeed, if you have any tips for me after reading this, please do get in touch for I need all the help I can get.
But then again, if it were easy I probably wouldn’t persist at it.
In fact, my first real experience of salmon fishing was on a small water: the little River Endrick which spills into Loch Lomond from the Fintry hills. At the time it was all I knew of salmon fly-fishing, and since you could basically fish with a trout fly rod, it seemed to me to be perfect for my purposes. It was some twenty years or more ago, grant you, but I used to go up there after (and sometimes during) my college classes. An ancillary attraction was that I got to drop the lovely Lorna off on the way. Lorna was a beautiful young lady in my class at college who lived near the Endrick, so the ability to fish AND having a car had some additional merits during that period of my life.
But I digress; the Endrick in those days was absolutely stuffed with fish during the main runs, starting from September and lasting through October. Nowadays you hear old-timers tell of runs of fish coming through the pools with their backs out of the water. You shouldn’t dismiss these as old buffer’s tales of yore; I have witnessed this myself and it is a sight to behold, I guarantee.
You could be in a small pool, no longer than 25 yards long; one minute lifeless, the next literally swarming with salmon and sea-trout. It was incredibly exciting.
And that was the downfall of the Endrick really. These huge runs brought out a real fishmongering streak amongst a lot of the anglers, particularly in the lower reaches nearer Glasgow it has to be said. I used to watch them standing there with lead cored lines, heaving them out over the backs of the running fish in the shallow water and then sniggering them out. Criminal – literally. There were guys there who would literally fill their car boots (trunks if you are an American reading this) with foul-hooked fish.
And what was more criminal was the insidious way you became sucked into it. I couldn’t seem to catch a salmon by legal means on that wee river, so eventually I adopted a “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em “ attitude and “caught” my first salmon on the fly. It was an 8lb hen fish and I was so appalled that I had stooped so low, I let her go immediately. I still remember it as if it were yesterday though.
Later in the same season, I was trying to fish “properly” yet also wondering if I could get another one “foul” by casting a floating line over a fast run and whipping the fly past the running fish quickly. This time I actually got one in the mouth! Did I foul it or did it grab the small, speeding fly as it passed? We’ll never know, but I was sufficiently convinced of my mandate to harvest that particular one as a present for my uncle Jim. I guess that one should qualify as my first ever salmon on the fly, but I’ve never been confident enough to call it that so it would still be many years later on the Nith before I would formally and properly join the ranks of salmon fly-fishers.
Anyway, that season was basically enough for me on the Endrick – I couldn’t stomach the failure of doing it properly whilst all around were succeeding illegally. In case I do get any indignant emails though, I did meet lots of very professional, efficient and LEGAL fishers on the Endrick too; especially further up near the headwaters. But up there it was really crowded and the river was even smaller – I could actually jump over it in one or two places.
So I pretty much gave up small rivers for a while. The next time I did fish one, actually, was way up in Wester Ross – a remote and wild part of the world. I booked a family holiday up there when my son Jamie was not even 2 years old. The cottage was called Badagyle and the attraction for me was that I had two lochs and the right bank of a small river to fish for the week. All to myself.
The cottage was a dump, like so much of the Highland Scottish accommodation available to anglers and holidaymakers alike. You have to wonder what on earth people are thinking of when they advertise these places as “comfortable bases to explore this beautiful land…” .The land is beautiful alright, but the accommodation often resembles something out of the third world and what passes for "service" still amazes me in this day and age. I have to say that having travelled all over the world, some of the worst places to stay are here in my native Scotland.
Still, the loch was there and the scenery out over Stac Polly and Suilven mountains was truly awe-inspiring. The wee river wasn’t half-bad either. The first night I went out, I tied on a small size 16 Peter Ross and, after scrambling down a mile or so of steep, heather-clad gully, I came to the junction of the burn and the small, brackish lochan that joined it to the sea.
I unhooked the fly from the keeper ring, flicked it into the neck of the stream at the head of the lochan and it was immediately grabbed solidly by a fish. I thought that it was a sea-trout, but when it tried to dive into the reeds and I held it hard, praying the leader would hold, I saw the unmistakable tail of a small salmon break the surface. I eventually beached the fish with the small double hook almost bent straight. It was a bit black, but it was a fish and I took it anyway. The family called me First Cast Charlie after that.
I fished the burn again throughout the week but caught nothing else. The lochan was more productive and in here I had a few small sea-trout, lost a few more and also lost a nice salmon. It was, needless to say, stuffed with coloured grilse waiting to run the burn in the first flood, although the terrain that it flowed through was very daunting and made me marvel yet again at the lengths these creatures will go to for sex.
The biggest problem with Badagyle was, inevitably, the midges. These vicious little beasts were present constantly and in unbelievable densities. Every bare piece of flesh was bitten. Putting repellent on merely slowed the process down. It was sheer torture and I remember one night standing by what passed for the sea-pool waiting for high tide and having to run almost screaming after only five minutes to find a breezy headland so that the little devils couldn’t keep up with me.
After this, I pretty much stuck to the Spey for my salmon fishing; the fish were fresher, bigger and the midges, although potent, were manageable.
But a friend of mine told me that he had started fishing a small local water called the Allan. He told me, by the way, that they had taken 468 fish out of it in 1998. 468 fish – that was more than my regular beat on the Spey took in the same season. So I applied right away and got a ticket for the following year.
When I say local, I mean literally local. I live on the banks of the river Forth, a respectable salmon river in it's own right although where I live it is slow and canal like so useless for salmon fishers. The Allan drains into the Forth and the best piece of fly water is only a ten-minute drive from my house. A lot of the river is, like the Forth, canal like in nature, but this one stretch near the village of Kinbuck has about a mile of very streamy water with some good looking holding pools.
On my first night out, I timed it right after a spate. Small rivers are invariably spate rivers in that they simply don't fish unless there is a flood, and even then, the really sweet spot is just when the river is falling and clearing. At least, that's how the theory goes. The water was falling off this evening and I made my way down through some pools, flicking a fly here and there as I went, until I came upon a guy who was into a small salmon. He expertly tailed the fish and equally expertly released it. His name was Jim and he proved a very affable guy – as indeed did all the local anglers that I have met, with the odd exception – who proceeded to tell me which pools were good and which were not. The usual local lore, you know the form by now.
Anyway, he then got out of the pool and told me to have a cast through. So I started at the head and worked my way down. About halfway, I felt a take and lifted solidly into a fish. Then, just as quickly, it was off. Grinning at my stupidity for striking, I took a pace forward and cast again. Another cast later and I had another fish take. This time I paused and the line went solid. Then it went slack. Hmmm…
A couple of casts later and I had another fish on – same result. Then another. Then another. By this time, I was cursing volubly.
Five fish in quick succession – all of them lost. What on earth was going on?
So I came back again the next day, but this time I brought my small 12ft 6in salmon double hander. I reasoned that it must be because I was fishing with a single-handed trout rod that I was maybe striking the fish too fast. Something like that anyway.
Half way down the same pool I got a take. The line went slack without me doing a thing. I re-cast and this time it hit the fly a lot harder and we were on! It was only a wee 4lb grilse and I put it back, but vengeance was mine!
But only for a while. I have fished that river now for the last three years and I continually miss or lose fish. On one spectacular occasion I got the gentlest of takes and I fed that fish so much line, it must have swallowed the fly right down and had it trailing out its asshole. It still came off after five minutes. What’s a guy to do?
The regulars all do better than I do, needless to say. But then, I think it’s because they put in the hours and, more importantly, they put the hours in at the right time. I am starting to appreciate that 468 fish in a year only came about after an awful lot of sustained angling pressure from a dedicated bunch of very expert fishers. I tend to come down for a few hours as the spate is falling: they are there for 12 hour stints and catch the river from thundering flood to tea-coloured torrent.
What strikes me about these guys though is their general attitude to the sport. They are completely different from the guys I meet on the Spey. No worse and no better – just different and responding to different circumstances.
The fish they fish for behave more like big trout than salmon in the small river environment; so they fish for them like that, with trout rods and droppers. They don’t strike them but tend to do nothing on the take and the fish more or less hook themselves as far as I can see. Often as not, they come off just like my experiences. They also frequently carry a spinning rod and alternate between the two, normally incompatible, methods. The rules of the Association state clearly that no angler should fish in front of another without asking permission; so you’ll be half way down a pool when a spinning rod will poke itself through the vegetation ahead and voice will yell “I’ll just hae a wee cast in here, is that ok?”.
If they are unlucky enough to hook the far bank, they usually set the rod down, find a shallow run and wade across to retrieve the fly or spinner – irrespective of who else is around and where they are fishing. It’s that sort of thing and that sort of water. It’s classic blue-collar fishing: friendly and familiar – as much a social occasion as a serious pursuit.
But they do take an awful lot of fish and, by and large, release an awful lot of fish.
That’s as it should be.
Chic McSherry October 2001