Game Fish Diaries - Chic McSherry

Fresh grilse are different - short and powerful with silvery bodies and a stubbier head than the spring/multi-sea-winter fish. A perfect sports fish if ever there was one, not least because there can be so many of them running the river together and they also take the fly freely. Indeed, on many Scottish rivers there would be no real quality salmon fishing left if it weren’t for the wee grilse that run from June to September.

The July rains come on balance most years, and although the floods can run to three-foot or more above normal level, the fishing is still manageable. Mostly. Except when the river runs 5ft over the norm. Then it’s pretty dire; like fishing in chocolate soup, accompanied by cold temperatures and driving rain.

It actually rose over 8 feet in one memorable July and flooded out many of the villages and towns lower down the Spey valley. In the year of the “big one”, I was fishing for only a half week on Tulchan D beat and I arrived when it was hitting the 5ft mark on its way down from its 8 foot peak. Further downstream, the largish town of Elgin, on the banks of another river, was completely flooded so it was a serious spate in what passes for summer-time in Scotland. I didn't get any grilse in that year, but I did get some summer salmon (two or more sea-winter fish) up to 16 lbs as the river fined and cleared; a satisfying salmon in anyone's books.

Of course, although rare, it is equally possible to get no water at all and endure scorching temperatures. I recall one year where the daytime temperature hit 30 degrees Celsius and the river was about 9” below normal levels. Nothing was caught at all that week and in the entire month, only 12 salmon and grilse were caught on the whole of Tulchan D beat. That’s the kind of numbers you can expect each day when they are running well.

My ghillie for what used to be my regular July week on Tuclhan D was Robert, a large, affable, beaming Highland laddie who had the dubious distinction of once being slapped in the face by one of the female guests. The story is too long to go into, but it involved a combination of a lost sea trout and the English titled-class's endemic confusion over service and servility. To Robert’s immense credit, he refrained from pitching the old crone into the water.

I’ve fished with various anglers on this week. My co-angler on the beat for a while was a certifiably insane chap from the North of England that we'll call “Mr J”. I fished with him a few times, and his first words one year were "Ow do Chic, having a good 'un?" Before I could respond he followed on with, "Ah've only caught a goose so far this year."

Clearly his medication was having little effect.

Without waiting for any response from me, he started to ramble on about how he had hooked this goose on the back-cast and how it had flapped around over his head and so on and on and on. Robert and I backed further away from him examining the contents of my fly box as we went. He topped that week by catching a large black hen salmon which had come in during the spring and taken up residence in the main pool on the beat. He had been fishing for it for over an hour with me looking on as I waited to fish the pool, and I had all but decided to go and suggest he move on when he hooked the unfortunate beast.

The fish was lying in the tail of this hugely productive pool, which is very deep and has steep banks. When he hooked the fish he was on the bank; the minute he hooked it he jumped into the water! “What a nutter” I thought. If you don’t fish for salmon, you should know that the last place you want to be when fighting a fish is in the water. When on land, you can run up or down the bank as the fight dictates and the additional height also helps you to dominate the fish more and so shortens the fight time.

I watched, in cringing fascination, as he stood chest high in the river and battled the poor fish for at least 40 minutes trying to bring it to his net. Eventually, Brian, another ghillie, appeared and I sent him down to get the fish out or get Mr J out, before one or other of them expired. By the time he got there though, Mr J had got a hold of the hapless salmon and dispatched it, to everyone’s disgust (there is simply no need to kill black, or stale, fish – they don’t even taste good). Later in the hut, he boasted that this was the fish he’d hooked and lost the year before in exactly the same spot. Like I said, the guy was certifiable…

I came to the grilse late, as I said before, and it was a year or two before I started to take my kids with me, after a few “exploratory” trips on my own. My kids accompany me on most of my salmon fishing expeditions and I love to have them around. By and large they love it too, provided it’s not a balls-out-fish-till-you-drop trip, that is.

But the grilse suit family life very well; the fishing is best in the morning and the evening and so I can spend all day with the kids doing the regular holiday-dad stuff. It’s a good enough arrangement for all concerned, even if I’m totally done in by the end of it.

Grilse are obliging wee fish, with a real love for chasing small silvery flies. Where the obligement declines a little is when they actually take the fly itself. They can be the devil themselves to get a hook into. Sometimes there is no possibility of missing them, they hit the fly so hard, but mostly they take it so gently that you would be hard pushed to know they were even there, especially in the slower pools.

Grilse taught me how to fish with a loop. Well, let’s clarify that; the grilse themselves didn’t teach me – that would be absurd – it was the fact that I missed so many which eventually persuaded me that I should learn a new trick. If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you always got after all…

I had been fishing happily off the reel for years for spring salmon (a fish that normally takes with a determined authority) and then experienced the hugely frustrating experience of missing a couple of takes from grilse each day. To put this in perspective, I was also landing a couple of fish a day at this time, but being a “normal” fisherman, enough is never enough and the ones you lose or miss are always the biggest. You know that.

Even after my best ever week where I landed 13 fish, I still recall with the utmost clarity the ones that I missed or that threw the hook just after hook-up. Especially the one that ran all of my fly line out plus about 50yds of backing before dropping the fly. How can they possibly do that?

So I tried, as an experiment, to hold a loop of line to feed the fish when they took the fly. This is a text book technique and most fisherfolk know the theory; you hold a loop of about a yard or so of line hooked under your finger and when you feel a take you simply drop it or feed it to the fish as it turns. After a bit of messing about, it worked. If I felt the slightest extra pressure on the line and I’d simply let the loop feed through and, often as not, the nodding weight of a grilse would be there.

A bit of extra pressure on the line didn’t always mean that a fish was responsible of course, and sometimes the line would simply feed out to nothing. The feeling of being in control had firmly returned, however, so it was worth the occasional heart-stopping nothingness. And the more I practiced, the better I got, which is another good thing about grilse. They are obliging as I said and will come to the fly a few times, thereby giving you a second and even a third chance to get it right.

But then again, you have to wonder about how smart they are too. One evening I went out with my pal George in tow to take some photos of the event. I waded in three yards, unhooked the fly from the keeper ring, flicked it out into the stream and started to lengthen my line, all the while gabbing to George. Once I had pulled several yards of line off and collected it around my feet, I raised the rod to make a cast only to find a grilse firmly attached to the fly. I would never have been believed if George hadn’t been with me and taken the photos to prove it.

I badly want to catch one when one or other of my kids is with me though. Jamie comes out with me in the early mornings and late evenings (night fishing he calls it – it makes him feel very grown up to be trusted to come out night-fishing with his Dad). Scott, on the other hand, comes down around lunchtime for a quick half-hour or so. He is the more committed fisherman in reality, but he’s just a bit young to be trusted around deep, dangerous, fast flowing water.

The problem with grilse and small kids is that they pose diametrically opposite demands on your attention. For example, one morning I hooked a nice fish in Hunters pool and Jamie started to run down a very rocky shore towards me in his excitement. I could visualise him falling headlong and requiring some time in casualty, so I spent the first crucial 5 minutes of the fight watching him and calling out directions and instructions to “slow down!” Then, as he drew level with me and was finally on a safe sandy patch of bank, the fish simply fell off. On another occasion, I turned to tell Scott for the tenth time to please stop throwing pebbles in the pool when I got a perfect take and tightened too early thereby missing the fish. And so on and so forth.

Maybe one day I will hook and land one and they will look at me and ask what all the fuss was about. Such is life when you’re young.

My summer catches on Tulchan D beat over the years

I don't fish Tulchan anymore in the summer. Matter of fact I don't fish Tulchan at all anymore. Over a nineteen year period, from 1990 until 2009 I fished the water 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 expressing my disappointment and hoping that "normal service" would be resumed. I have yet to receive a reply or even an acknowledgement. That sticks in my craw. 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 beautiful River Snizort in Skye during my old July week. You can always fish elsewhere after all. Some times in life, as in fishing, you need to change the fly...