I suppose that I’m starting to exhibit definite anorak tendencies by admitting to this, but I also love to dip into it from time to time during the close season and refresh my memory with what happened on such and such a day. My handwriting is appalling, but that’s all to the good as no-one else but me can decipher it which ensures privacy.

I have been fishing for spring salmon for a fair number of years now and every trip is different; there is no such thing as a typical week.

I had a regular rod on both the Tay and the Tummel in Perthshire for a few years but my main springtime week used to be on on the River Spey at Tulchan on C Beat , and it occurred right at the end of May/ beginning of June – the last crossover week with a few days in either month. I fished on the same beat in that week from 1990 or thereabouts until 2009 and I have accurate diary entries from 1994 onwards. They make strange, yet interesting, reading sometimes.

Like the time in 1995 when I first encountered a certain Arab gentleman who was rude enough to laugh at my nice fresh 14lb salmon – the only one I caught for my week and of which I was immensely proud. Why did he laugh? Well he was an asshole and he hadn’t caught anything himself that day, that’s why. Even reading about it my diary now makes my blood boil – but luckily he was accompanied by Bill Day who told him to shut up and go catch his own. Bill became a fast friend immediately.

Or the “turning point” week in 1996 when I felt that I had finally cracked it and totaled 6 salmon and 6 sea trout for the week. The jubilation positively shouts off the pages. I was even moved enough to write “my life can end now” on one page. Jeez I can get it bad sometimes…

Rolling into 1997 I recorded low water and hot temperatures for the entire week – well below summer level – and not the kind of conditions that are conducive to catching salmon. Indeed, when the river is like that the salmon just don’t run. Normally. But me and Bill (who was now my fishing partner on the two-man rota system) positively hammered the salmon and sea trout every day. The perfect sea trout night had it’s genesis in this week too.

When we get to 1998 it was all change again and the rain poured the whole time. I hooked and landed only one salmon. Bill had been up for three whole weeks and he only got one in all that time. He keeps a diary too and years later I read his entry; for the entire three weeks he simply wrote “Bloody awful – even Chic only managed one”. Respect to the man of few words. It was also absolutely freezing during that week with frosts at night and I was decidedly unprepared for the bad weather having stupidly left my neoprene waders and heavy weather clothes at home. Mind you, it was May! My eldest son Jamie was old enough to come along with me to the riverbank in this year and he babbled incessantly from the bank whilst I fished; about the military jets that overfly the area, about black holes, about rhinocerous and also, of all things, about quicksand. He was fascinated by it and god only knows how it got into his head. The conversation became distinctly surreal when he asked “Daddy, could a jet land in quicksand if a rhino was already stuck in it?”

1999 was a complete bonanza – at least it was for me. I had 13 spring fish (all on the same fly) then capped that by coming back the following week for one day only and taking another 4. I had more than one fish each day and as well as those I landed, I rose or lost almost as many again. I recorded one fish I caught that, amazingly, had its innards hanging out of a huge gash in its side, clearly caused by a seal bite. And some people say that fish will die if they are released after a mere hook wound in their mouths? Here was a fish, miles from the sea, with a healed wound (healed in the sense that it was not bleeding) that was still prepared to take a fly and fought like a tiger… Anyway, I could do no wrong that spring and I was treated as some sort of Oracle by everyone on the beat. Didn’t last of course – never got a single pull in my whole 2000 week and I even went home a day early so disgusted was I.

In 2001 things improved a bit and I started well by catching two fish within the first few hours on the Monday morning. Bill was partnering with his son Nathan by now so I’d had a series of transient guests as fishing partners in the previous few years, depending on who the lodge let the rod to. The guy I was buddied with this year was an arrogant moron who referred to me as “the competition” from the start and progressively drove me crazy through the week; so much so that by the last evening I almost run over his fly line with the boat. At that point I’d got 5 and he’d only got 4 you see – so he was determined to try to beat me to the pool and he sneaked down half an hour before the agreed time. When I arrived he was already parked in the middle of the stream I had to cross in order to get to where I was to fish. What’s a guy to do? What saved my sanity that week was two great old guys, Tony and John, who worked a fabulous double act in the hut throughout lunch. They had a dry, self-deprecating, sense of humour and never failed to pick up on anything the other did. The kind of company you would travel a long way to enjoy. They in turn were guests of a really lovely group of people – the Dalton family – and it has been my pleasure to fish with them regularly during this week over the years. You get all kinds in the hut and you have to take the odd bad one with the overwhelming number of good ones.

Then came the disaster years: 2002 and 2003 with only one spring fish to show between them. No fish, high water, terrible weather in 2002 and one fish, low water, hot weather in 2003. The only recourse was to take longer and longer lunches with more and more wine. That takes stamina.

Spring on the Spey at Tulchan – it may be a lot of things but it is never dull. I guess I could have gone through each week and cherry-picked the best days and described them in all their glory. Because there are fabulous glory days in those diaries; tales of epic struggles with big fish or of cunning presentations to tempt a reluctant taker. But then, that would be giving you a dishonest view; to really get a sense of just what this sport can do to you, you need to see it warts and all. When taken over all, my average number of fish in a spring week from Tulchan was about 6; that’s one per day, and I can’t really complain about that fishing in Scotland in this day and age.

Yet when I read it over in isolation like this I could easily get depressed. Why on earth do I dedicate my meagre amounts of free time to this activity when it seems so, well, futile? The answer is that I love it - pure and simple. I love all its frustrations and failures and I love it all the more because when it does all come together it is truly magical. The feel of a big spring fish with its long, slow, deliberate pull on the fly and then the energy and determination as it fights you is one of the ultimate thrills in game-fishing, easily equalling the excitement of a marlin strike.

And when you have bested your fish, you can complete the pleasure by holding it in the water to let it recover, so that it can swim off to its own reproductive destiny - perhaps a bit wiser, a bit less predatory and therefore hopefully less likely to be caught again.

When put like that, it almost seems like a public service…

My spring catch statistics at Tulchan C Beat over the years

I don't fish Tulchan anymore in the spring. Matter of fact I don't fish Tulchan at all anymore. Over a nineteen year period, from 1990 until 2009 I fished the beat religiously: a week or half-week in Spring, same in Summer and the same in the Autumn with numerous single days here and there. I also went up for a week over Christmas or New Year. Even when there were lean years, and there have been plenty of those recently, I kept going back because I felt that it was important to continue to support the Estate; ghillies need paid as do housemaids and cooks after all. It all took a fair bit of change too when you added up fishing, cottage rents and meals etc. Never mind the bar bill...

Then in 2009 I wasn't offered any fishing at all apart from three odd days (on these Estates you get your weeks given to you and these are traditionally set in stone until you either die or go bankrupt) and even then these were offered to me only at the very last minute when all the other rods had been let.

They'd given away all of my regular fishing to other people in other words.

I wrote a letter to the owner; not a moaning whingeing one, but a balanced one I thought expressing my disappointment and hoping that "normal service" would be resumed. I have yet to receive a reply or even an acknowledgement from him. That sticks in my craw after nineteen years as a client. I am pretty sure that if he were treated like this on one of his regular lets, he would blow a gasket. Poor form...very poor form.

So - what price customer loyalty? You pays your money and you takes your chances these days I guess.

Forced to look for pastures new I went to fish the Middle Varzuga during my old June week and what a favour Tulchan did me there! I also discovered a fabulous little river, not far from where I live, where I can catch spanking sea-liced salmon and lots of hard fighting sea-trout on a beat that rivals Tulchan in looks, atmosphere and quality...at a fraction of the cost. But...shhhh...the owner has sworn me to secrecy...he calls it his "hidden gem" and he's not wrong there.

Some times in life, as in fishing, you need to change the fly...

As often happens, what started as a hobby website grew arms and legs until it eventually became a full-blown book. In February 2004 it was published under the slightly enhanced title Game Fishing Diaries: Details from Fishing in Life and is now available from most outlets from as little a $2.99 on Amazon Kindle. In November 2011 Volume 2 made an appearance also available on Kindle

Game Fishing Diaries - Volume 1

Game Fishing Diaries - Volume 2