A treasure trove for salmon fishers

I have just made a note in my diary to pay a call on Colin Innes when I next get up to the Dee. We haven't yet met but Colin contacted me a little while back and pointed me to his website, feathersfliesandphantoms which I can only describe as a treasure trove for salmon fishers. I have added a link to the sidebar here headed: Vintage Dee flies.

Just now I'm looking at his section with photographs of Dee salmon huts. I have never met anyone who goes salmon fishing who has not developed an affinity with the fishing hut. There are good huts, there are so-so huts and there are classic huts.

My favourite is the main hut at Carlogie beat on the Dee. Another great hut featured here by Colin, is the one at Sluie. The fishing at Sluie is not so great because of the profile of the beat (the best pool fishes better from the other side of the river) but where better to ruminate over this discovery than in its very fine hut? Colin has photographed the old maps and pictures on its walls.

Another great feature of this site is Colin's catalogue of old fishing flies used on the Dee, Don and Deveron. Looking at these old flies reminds us that there is nothing new under the sun. I can almost guarantee that the new wonder fly you will read about in virtually every issue of Trout & Salmon magazine will have had some earlier manifestation on a big single hook, perhaps, or tied with slightly different materials.

I would feel confident fishing any Scottish river with this Akroyd fly. Colin not only gives us a profile of the maker but also includes step-by-step instructions if you want to make the fly yourself.

It doesn't take long to realise that Colin must have ploughed through a lot of old (and therefore out-of-copyright) material, and transferred the relevant stuff on to the site, with plates of flies, covers and illustrations from old catalogues and newspapers, plus many of his own photographs. It would take one huge book to include all this stuff but a web site is like a living organism that can be updated constantly.

Colin says he enjoys curling up in front of a fire with an old fishing book and a whisky. Today I guess you can do something similar with your lap top. I only wish we could make lap tops more like books with spongy leather exteriors. No doubt it will happen eventually.

For those who prefer books to web sites, however, Colin tells us he is gathering much of his work together in a forthcoming book. In the meantime we can scan through this marvellous library of fishing ephemera. All I can say, Colin, is thank you for sharing your research with fellow anglers in such an accessible format. Not everyone can get access to libraries and this work provides a valuable window in to salmon fishing's rich heritage.

2007 - a bumper year for Scottish salmon

It seems hard to believe this but according to the Association of Salmon Fishery Boards, the total rod catch of salmon for 2007 was the third highest since consistent recording began in 1952.

Its annual statistical bulletin, Scottish Salmon and Sea Trout Catches, recorded 91,053 salmon caught by anglers in Scotland during the year, of which 55,472 (61 per cent)were released back into the water.

Only two years in the last half century have exceeded that figure - 1988 with 96,488 and 2004 with 92,918. The number of salmon and grilse killed on Scotland's rivers in the year fell to 65,468, of which 19,468, nearly a third, were killed by netsmen

The total reported Scottish catch of sea trout in 2007 was 27,115, compared with 28,824 in 2006. This breaks down to 5,574 killed by netsmen, 10,383 killed by anglers and 11,158 released by rods.

If you, like me, do some of your salmon fishing in the spring, you might be surprised by those figures. It didn't make for bumper catches on the Dee or the Tay - at least when I was there. I suspect that by far the the biggest catches have been recorded in the autumn.

Hugh Campbell Adamson, Chairman of the Association of Salmon Fishery Boards, described the number of salmon entering rivers as "fairly stable and on most rivers robust." He also said that there had been a "quantum leap" in the number of salmon caught and released.

But he said there remained concern over spring stocks, the erratic nature of grilse runs, and the continuing decline in sea trout catches.

If salmon stocks are stabilising I wonder if we are approaching the time when fishery boards could contemplate the tollerance of those anglers taking a week's fishing in the summer months having the option to take a fish of a certain size - say up to 7 lbs?

I remain uncomfortable about blanket catch and release for a game fish unless stocks were critical (in which case it's arguable we shouldn't fishing anyway) but would not want to see a return to the indiscriminate killing of the past.

As more anglers practice catch and release, so they are less likely to want to retain a fish but there are still those, particularly fishing in the last month of the season, intent on killing everything.

Those engaged in salmon conservation increasingly have an encouraging story to tell. It would be a shame if their efforts were undermined by a minority concern to knock everything that's landed on the head.


A 2007 trip to the Dee

Sunray Shadow

I've written a piece on my web site about fishing the Sunray Shadow on the River Dee. There are also some notes about landing fish. If you need an assistant, take my advice, be careful about asking your better half! Click on the link in the text if you wish to read more.
 
The picture here shows how it can be done as Andrew Pindar has a salmon netted by his wife, Caroline on the Oykel. All smiles and calmness.

August monsoon on the Dee

With two big spates in the same week, our trip to the Dee last week (August 2008) was wetter than usual. The fish didn't mind. They were taking advantage of the big flows and tearing up the river as fast as their fins could carry them. I think some of them were veterans of Rob's salmon survival game.

It made tactics interesting. Big fly or small fly? Floating line or intermediate? Sinking tip or no sinking tip? Start casting or have another cuppa in the hut?


The problem with sinking tips, to my mind, is that while they get down to fish that may be resting close to the bottom of the river, they are not crossing that wider cone of vision on the surface.

In the spring when the water is colder and the fish less willing to move far to a fly, the sunk lure is often essential. But in summer when running fish are moving quite close to the surface a sunk line could be fishing beneath them.

It doesn't help either when the water colours up in a spate. I change my flies and my approach too often - I know I do - but I do think you have to keep ringing the changes. It's a matter of degree and I need to be a little more patient, sticking with a fly for the length of a pool at least.

All the salmon I caught and hooked last week (OK we're talking three here) took a surface fly on a floating line (with a Maxima leader in preference fluorocarbon). The only fish I caught on an intermediate line were sea trout. I realise this is not statistically significant, nor is it typical.

My friends on the next beat were catching fish with a mixture of approaches although they too were often struggling in the conditions.

What this says, I think, is that there is no text book approach. Luck and persistence continue to play a big part.



End note: Gill's dad, Alan Barraclough who has been my fishing partner for the past 14 summers in Scotland, has decided his fishing days on the Dee are over. At the age of 82, wading was getting difficult. He isn't hanging up his rod altogether and plans to be fishing on the Tay again come the spring. I'll miss him and will always be grateful for the opportunity he gave me all those years ago to try my hand at salmon fishing.

From Russia with just a touch of smugness

Here's a report I just received from Roxtons, providers of fishing and shooting holidays (at a price).

CHARLIE WHITE REPORTS FROM LOWER VARZUGA:

"We are now into the second week of the season and summer has started to arrive. Bright sunshine and warm temperatures are melting the remaining snow and ice and the water levels are rising. The water is currently 5 degrees C and warming all the time but sinking lines are the best choice at present - we may well be into sink tips and intermediates by next week.

Last week the ten rods at Lower Varzuga landed 279 fish with an excellent average size. The rods also caught a number of sea trout - something we sometimes experience in the early weeks. The first three days of this week Michael Evans and party have taken 142 fish, with Chris Davis taking his first salmon on a fly. Alex Fenton and John Millar have each had two fish of 16lbs and a number of fish above 12lbs.

Kitza opened this week with a very encouraging start. The ten rods who are all, bar one, new to the river had 108 mint fresh fish for their three days with four of the rods landing their first ever salmon. The fish have been mostly caught below camp but as the river warms up it will not be long before the fish are spread all over the beat.

Middle Varzuga's first week saw the ten rods landing 211 fish with many new rods to the beat. This week the eleven rods, the majority of who know the river exceptionally well, have so far taken 277 fish. With the number of fish running the river here at Lower, I expect Middle's numbers to be somewhat different by the end of the week!

The river is looking superb at the moment, my only caveat being that we might get a day or two of high dirty water later this week as the warm weather melts the last of the snow."


Well bully for you Charlie. I'm sure we'd all catch salmon if the rivers were teeming with them. Let's be clear about this: this is fishing for the well heeled. It is also fishing for those obsessed with catching fish.

Would I go? With averages of 36 fish per rod per week in the Kola peninsula, you bet your bottom dollar I would. But I'm not sure I would pay the £5,000 minimum I would need to fork out to get there and fish. I'm told the cooking and residential facilities are excellent these days - better than the old days when everything was a bit rough and ready. But it's still Russia and the scenery is desolate.

But you go for the fishing don't you? Well not entirely. I want more than that. I want scenery, I want to stand around a bit and check out my surroundings. I want to chew the fat with my chums and sometimes - horror of horrors - I want to sit down and do nothing. Yes that's called "not fishing."

But when you're bringing back your tally to share with your party you're in a numbers game my friends. There's pressure to fish - all of the time. It becomes obsessive, manic and just a little bit unhealthy.

Am I embittered that I have spent most of my lifetime flogging away for salmon in Scottish rivers for extremely thin returns while novice anglers are filling their boots on the Kola? Not in the slightest (cough!). Blank days maketh the angler, someone once said (yes you guessed, that's a little bit of my home-spun twaddle but I'll hold to it, nevertheless).

So is my envy at these catches as green as the sour grapes? Too right it is. I would love a trip to the Kola rivers, if only to know what it is to see Atlantic spring salmon running in such prodigious numbers. Would I swap that for my summer week on the River Dee? Never. You can buy great fishing with a flourish of your cheque book, but some things in life are priceless.

OK then, would I swap my office-based existence, writing about work all day, for Charlie White's job as Roxton's director of fishing? Hmmm, let me think. Roxtons, you have my number.

Hook removal - a practical demonstration.

In more than 30 years since picking up a fly rod I have never experienced a barbed hook lodged in my skin - until the last Dee trip.

The night before we fished Mark Crampton Smith was outlining a discomforting but, he assured us, effective method for removing a hook from the head. The idea, he said, was to loop some nylon around the bend in the hook, then push the hook inwards with a thumb while yanking swiftly on the thread.

It sounded a bit grizzly to me but the very next day I had the opportunity to put it to the test. I'm not sure what happened, a mistimed cast perhaps, combined with a gust of wind; all I know is that there was a sharp crack to my sunglasses and a bang on the upper cheek, leaving a large double hook embedded in my skin.

Yes, I know some will be saying that the barbs should have been crimped. Well they weren't. The cheek felt a bit a numb but the hook had to go so I went over to our hook specialist, Mark, who seemed less confident than he had been when discussing the theory.

He did just as he had been told and the hooks were out, almost painlessly, leaving a couple of neat pin pricks in my cheeks.

I must have been so impressed that two days later I drove another hook in to my skin, this time a finger. The point was close to the bone so pushing it through wasn't an option. This time I had Will to do the necessary and he chose forceps, ripping out the hook before I was ready. That one did hurt but, again, it left no more than a neat hole. After that I was much more careful in my casting.

If you don't fish with some kind of eye protection I hope these lessons will be sufficient to convince you of the wisdom of doing so.

Trophy fishing on the Dee

The spring Dee salmon fishing was as tough as ever this year but our party improved slightly on last year’s performance with seven fish. Two of our goals were achieved when everyone caught a fish and we had a fish on every day of the week.

They were all in the 6 lbs to 10 lbs range, so we didn’t land one of the big Dee springers although Mark Crampton Smith lost a big fish, apparently after mistaking it for a rock. This is not as daft as it sounds.

A big salmon can be pretty stubborn, holding station, refusing to budge, but if there is any “rock or fish” doubt in the mind, it’s better to hold steady rather than yanking hard at the obstruction as Mark did. His rock finally responded by spitting out the hook and shooting off up stream to a more appreciative beat.

First fish

The first fish fell to Bryan Kruse which, in an earlier visit, when we did that sort of thing, would have scooped him the first fish prize money in the sweep.

Mark objected to a sweep, arguing that it was ungentlemanly to despoil our experience with grubby money, so he had to settle for our new trophy, the Carlogie Cup for best all round fishing performance. This included ferreting out a fish from a “secret pool” that also produced a salmon for Will Sadler who had been showing signs of desperation as the only fishless rod midway through the week.

First he blamed his rod, then his line, then his rod and his line until the ghillie loaned him an identical rod which somehow seemed better.

Sluie Saucer

There was a second trophy, the Sluie Saucer, named after another nearby beat that we had rented for the week. This one has less to do with fishing prowess and more to do with general ineptness. After falling in the river three times, hooking myself twice, dropping off in the hut while holding a glass of wine, and losing my wading stick, I suppose I couldn’t complain when the saucer came my way.

Two other goals, a salmon over 15 lbs and a fish at Sluie, both eluded us. Sluie has recorded just two fish for the season to date and the beat owner is more than a little hacked off with spring runs that are a shadow of the old days.



During the 1960s river netting was taking 60,000 salmon a year and 10,000 or more were falling to the rods. Today the annual total of rod caught fish on the Dee in a season is somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 fish with all but a small minority returned. It's difficult to say how many fish are caught more than once but when records were taken of River Carron salmon - all tagged - some 19 per cent of catches were fish that had been caught twice.

Burn Improvement

While burn improvement on the Dee is to be commended, I am less convinced about the wisdom of the Dee Salmon Fishery Board decision to close its hatcheries. If the river was teeming with fish I could appreciate an argument to simply let the fish get on with their own breeding. But the Dee is far from reaching the levels of returning fish it needs to restore and sustain the kind of abundance it enjoyed in the past.

This week the weather warmed up and catches increased. They had 15 fish between four rods at Ballogie, the beat below us. The Carlogie total was six in ideal conditions, so I don’t think we did too badly.

The spring fishing is much improved on the way it was 10 years ago when some believed that the Dee springer could be extinct, but there is still a long way to go.

April on the Tay

The problem with turning up to fish on the River Tay in the spring is that the fishing has been so poor in recent years I find it difficult to raise any sense of optimism and, believe me, I am an optimist.

No matter, it's good to practice my casting. On the Monday morning I had been fishing just 20 minutes at a place they call the "little shot" - an old netting spot - on the Benchill beat of the Upper Scone fishings, when I had the strongest of pulls on the fly.

I had run a Black Frances through the pool on an intermediate line with a fast-sinking tip, and had just changed the fly to a Temple Dog.

I retraced my steps on the bank and, after about three or four casts, hooked in to a salmon. Could it have been the same fish? Unfortunately I lost it after two or three minutes, but it was a reminder that I shouldn't have been so complacent. Fish were running and, although they weren't stopping, there was always the chance of a take.

On the Tuesday it rained heavily, leaving the water coloured for much of Wednesday. On the Thursday I was fishing the Cawnpore pool just opposite Stanley Mills when a fish took my fly just three or four yards from the bank. It was not a big fish, about 8 lbs, but it stripped off a lot of line before I beached it and returned it, having left my landing net at home.

On the Saturday morning I hooked in to another a little further down the same bank but this too, came off after a couple of minutes. I noticed that the landed fish was lightly hooked. These were fast running fish, hitting the fly from behind, not turning on it in the classic take.

Our group had six fish for the week, not great but a hell of a lot better than some recent years when the return has been one or two or none at all. Had all the lost fish held we would have been in double figures.

It was satisfying too, that the bank outfished the harling boats, with four coming from the bank, three on "flying C" spinners. I was the only one fishing fly but it fished just as well as the spinners. In fact I would argue that it fished better because it fishes a little more slowly.

It's too early to be optimistic about the Tay but the spring runs do seem to be improving gradually. It will be interesting to compare this with the Dee in a week's time.

Another big Scottish salmon

Did you see the report that a 40+ pounds salmon had been caught on the River Dee last week at Banchory? It was caught on the Lower Blackhall beat a few miles east of Potarch Bridge pictured here.

The measured length, according to its captor, Nick Craigs, was 53 inches, pointing to an extremely large fish. He has made a relatively conservative estimate on weight of 42 pounds (still the fish of a lifetime, for sure, but nowhere near as big as the claimed length would suggest).

If you look at the Sturdy Scale for calculating the weight of salmon, a 42 pound fish equates to a length of 46 ins. Against the measure of 53 ins is the hallowed weight of 64 pounds. I say hallowed, of course, because this was the weight of the British record salmon caught by Georgina Ballantine in 1922.

Poor Mr Craigs. Unlike the giant salmon caught by Donald Milne on the Ness last October, there were no other witnesses to this catch. No photographs either. And here we are with yet another measure that would appear to challenge the British record.

It should be noted that a 64 pound fish would indeed have been a record of sorts because the Dee is fly only and Miss Ballantine's fish was hooked using the harling method. A fly caught fish of this size really is in exclusive company. Only six (three in Scotland, one in England and two in Norway)of 64 lb and above are listed in Fred Buller's authoritative book, The Domesday Book of Giant Salmon. Why didn't any of these secure the British record, you may ask? It's all to do with authentication.

Poor Mr Craigs. For the rest of his life he must live with questions about that fish, not least those he will ask of himself. How carefully did he make his measure? Could there have been a teensy weency slip up, some nagging doubt? If not, why be so conservative? As he says in his account it was dusk when he landed the fish.

If I were him I would say to hell with the naysayers. I have caught a few big fish (by big here I'm talking closer to the 20 lb mark) and lost one or two larger ones when fishing alone. I know what they were. Today they are nothing but memories. But what memories. This one will be his great memory - something for the grandchildren. The fish itself was returned (in line with Dee fishing policy) to breed yet more big fish.

There are going to be many more stories such as this in the coming year or so. the bigger fish are coming back, I have no doubt. We are unlikely to see the Ballantine record broken for the simple reason that more and more anglers, like Mr Craigs, are returning their catch and that has to be a good thing. Let's leave the record talk and the disputes to the bar room and congratulate those who fulfill the dream of every salmon angler.

Fish art

It was great to see trout in Madeira's levadas last week. These are narrow channels used to transport spring water for irrigation all over the island. The channels are not more than two feet wide and the water rarely more than a foot deep so the fish don't grow very big, but there are plenty of them.

In one of the plunge pools at the foot of a water fall we saw trout to about a pound. They were breeding too.

The week away was bad timing for grayling fishing since last week was settled weather in Surrey where I live, whereas this week the rains are back, muddying up the river.

So I've taken out my fly boxes for something to do and tonight we'll probably have a tying session. Yippee, says Gill. Just now I'm sorting out some salmon flies for trips to Scotland in the spring.

Black Frances

Last year (when the water was unseasonably low) I did well with a tungsten-headed Black Frances (you can read how this classic Icelandic fly got its name here). The yellow paint on the tungsten head very quickly rubs off but the fly sinks quickly, allowing it to present well in the stream straight after the cast.

I will probably do most of my fishing with the Frances again this spring, alternating with something brighter such as a cascade tube or a temple dog, trying various weights and sizes depending on the conditions.

I plan to stick with an intermediate line on the Dee and Tay with maybe a fast sinking tip in the deepest Tay pools.

Fishing lust

The other thing that has aroused my fishing lust today is a copy of Beneath the Surface, The Wildlife Art of David Miller that arrived in the post today. David's paintings are superb. Check him out at his website here. I reviewed his book here.

I have just been in touch with another of my favourite marine artists, Malcolm Cheape who lives in Perthshire. His pictures are very much a narrative, containing all kinds of imagery, drawings and sometimes notes relating to the subject. It's clear from our conversation, not to mention his art, that he has a strong interest in history.

Malcolm told me about the Gask Ridge, a string of Roman forts in Scotland, one of which I notice was Inchtuthil. I mentioned this site near Spittalfields in a column about freshwater mussels. I wonder if these forts had a role in helping the Romans exploit and protect pearl fishing interests?