Salmon film

The angler in this film is lucky to get away with a snag while he is playing a salmon. The underwater camera shows just how salmon respond to a fly. They seem to be tempted most when it is dangled just above them. Of course it's rarely so easy to find a group like this but the crystal clear Icelandic waters enables the fisherman to pinpoint his cast.

Helmsdale prices

Those who like to mix their fishing with deer stalking might be interested in a package for two rods, inclusive with accommodation and ghillie that has just come up on the Helmsdale for September 14, price £7,100 (contact Ron Sutherland at enquiries@helmsdalecompany.com).

That's a bit out of my price bracket. Also, I'm not sure I want to mix the two. The stalking, however, should not be too demanding. I was driving down the Helmsdale valley at dusk just over a week ago and stopped the car when I noticed about half a dozen red deer stags in the gloom not more than 30 yards away from the road. I wound my window down and whistled and they looked back but didn't run.

I had been doing a bit of touring in the far north after fishing for a week on the Dee. With rods in the car I was wondering about the Helmsdale Association water but thought it was a bit unfair to pile fishing on fishing when my wife was keen to do other things.

Heading northwards we stopped in a lay-by on the A9 just north of Dornoch. There's a hill here called The Mound and I had been told how to get some reasonably priced salmon fishing nearby on the river Fleet. It was tempting to give it a try but one of the locals said the fish had not been taking in the previous week (just like it had been on the Dee) so I decided to give it a miss and we took a trip to spend the day on Orkney instead (where, incidentally, you can get some very good trout and sea trout fishing).

The flow from the Fleet is controlled by sluice gates where salmon and sea trout queue to pass. I was curious to know what restrictions, if any, there would be to fish the tidal bit immediately east of the gates but couldn't find out about this. I'm keen to know about the rights on river estuaries. Does anyone know how they work? The picture here was taken just west of the sluice gates at dusk. There's more information about the sluice gates here and if you read the last sentence you can see why I'm wondering about fishing rights.

We were late back from Orkney and, unwisely, drove west so that I could explore the Halladale and Helmsdale valleys. This would have been fine in daylight but the track was narrow and bleak during the late evening. The one hotel en route, called the Fosinard, said it had no rooms. This seemed odd as there were no cars in the car park and all the room keys were on their hooks. Perhaps it is simply closed for business.

I didn't get chance to call in the Helmsdale tackle shop but this is the place to find out everything you need to know about fishing in that area. A few doors down there is an excellent fish and chip shop called La Mirage. As the picture shows its decor is a little strange but the fish and chips are first rate.

Sunray Shadow

The only fly that had much success for me on the Dee last week was the sunray shadow. I'm not sure why the fish weren't taking as they were the previous week. Many fish had moved through, leaving stubborn residents in the pool and it didn't help that the water level was up and down all week.

The sunray shadow fishes best with a riffled hitch and pulled across a lie so that it creates a wake on the surface. Often fish will wait until the fly reaches the end of its arc and "on the dangle" before striking. But on one occasion last week a salmon struck as soon as the fly hit the water.

Some people argue that this fly works best where the water surface is relatively unbroken but I find it works in a ripple too and I prefer it if there is a reasonable push of water too.

It can work well on resident fish as it can provoke them to strike where other flies will fail to do so. The fish pictured was a 10 lb resident that fell to the fly. The strike is always visible and dramatic so it's an exciting way to fish. I wouldn't fish this way all the time but neither would I be without a surface-fished wake fly in my box. It's an essential piece of salmon-fishing kit and works for sea trout too.

Online fly casting lessons

I don't know about you, but I find I have to work on my fly casting constantly to help it improve. I didn't have lessons when I started and that's a pity because it meant I got in to some bad habits which still return from time to time.

On the other hand it has meant that I have had all kinds of advice from some of the best casters in the business. If you are just about to embark on fly fishing it might be best to get some tuition.

Even if you have been fishing a while it's worth checking out the experts from time to time to pick up a few refinements. If you can't afford lessons and don't have an experienced friend to help you you could do a lot worse than building your cast from this series of videos.

The most important thing on the cast is to take note of the forward and backward stops. You need to get both of them right. It took me a long time to build in the forward stop and even now I sometimes forget it when salmon casting. The point is made here in Eoin Fairgrieve's site, looking in this case at the Spey cast.

One problem of, course, in concentrating on your cast is that you can be focusing so much on doing long, perfect casts that you forget to fish. If you want to cover the fish that might be nearest to you it's important to start with short casts, sometimes standing well back from the bank.

It's a bloke thing, I suppose, to wade in as far as you dare, then launch great shooting casts across the river. Why? Because you can. You see this all the time in salmon fishing, less so among chalk stream fishers, stalking individual trout by sight.

If a salmon river is swollen after heavy rain, the likelihood is that the fish will be lying quite close in anyway. There will be no need for wading or for long casts. Yes, we all want to cast properly but first we have to think about the fish.

Salmon fishing on the River Oykel

Monday morning on the river Oykel. The water was perfect and the fish were running in numbers. You dream about days like this.

Gill and I were sharing a rod as guests of Andrew Pindar, chairman of the Pindar printing group, on the lower Oykel beats. The four beats are run by a consortium fronted by Mohamed Al-Fayed whose kilted waxwork dummy can be found in the shop at the nearby Falls of Shin.

They like Al-Fayed around these parts. He has donated computers to the local schools among other things. That kind of generosity can buy you a lot of tolerance for your kilted vanity. Who cares if there is not, as yet, an Al-Fayed clan tartan?

Osprey nests

So where is the Oykel? I had to ask this myself as I had never been so far north on the east coast. You drive (or fly) to Inverness at the head of the Caledonian Canal and just keep on going another hour, not far from Bonar Bridge.

The lodge, overlooking the river, had magnificent views of the hills where we often spotted golden eagles and ospreys on hunting forays. There are two osprey nests in the area and we spent the best part of an afternoon watching a pair with their fledglings.

That was after the spate when the river was shrinking to its bare bones. The spate itself had been running the previous week when the 12 rods on the four lower beats had caught 145 salmon and grilse.

Snapped line

So Monday was the tail end of the spate and we had to make the most of it. But it's hard to do your best when you reach a new river. We rose before breakfast and went to one of the best pools where Gill lost a fish. We should have skipped breakfast altogether but there was the morning organising to do - the allocation of rods and fishing spots. There is etiquette to observe as a guest and the first day on a new river is always strange for the newcomer.

The gillie took us back to the the same beat and with my second or third cast I felt a pull on the line. The next cast - a long one across the neck of the pool - produced a strong take and a thrashing fish. But after less than a minute it was away - with the hook.

Yes it took the hook. That shouldn't happen. Nothing wrong with the knot. The line had snapped. "Fluorocarbon? Bin it. It's a load of crap," said the ghillie. I tied on a new fly, pulled the line to test it and it snapped again.

This is not the first time I have heard a ghillie decrying fluorocarbon. Jimmy Barrett, who has a lifetime of fishing experience on the Tay where he ghillied on the Upper Scone beat, believes that fluorocarbon can be brittle and prone to nicking. Certainly it does not have the same give or stretch as nylon.

So I changed leaders. With almost the next cast I had a fish on again - a healthy 11 lb hen fish which put up a real fight and needed no revival as it was released. I handed the rod to Gill and within 10 minutes she was playing a grilse to the bank where she released it.



Trusted patterns

The lower Oykel fishings impose a 6-fish limit with no fish to be taken that are longer than 25 ins (about 7 lbs).

Without the breakage, without breakfast, we would have had more, really should have had more, but two fish in a morning isn't bad. Later in the afternoon I had another that came to a small plastic tube fly - stoats tail and silver. The others took either cascade or stoats tail and silver patterns, either size 10 or eight.

There is no need to fish too small when there's a good flow and there are fresh taking fish. Nor is there any need to be too choosy about fly patterns or methods. We simply used trusted patterns with double hooks on a straight cast.

Andrew Pindar hooks in to a grilse.

But when the fish stop running and you're trying for the "residents" in blazing sunshine the fishing gets a whole lot more difficult. We raised one or two on bombers and sunray shadows but couldn't get a take. Had it not been for the bright sunshine I think we might have had a few more fish. As it was we had seven fish to the three rods in the week and everyone who started the week had a fish.

I kept my second fish, a lovely 7-pounder and the first salmon I have killed for some years.

It seems churlish, however, to talk numbers on a river like the Oykel. It's a privilege enough simply to be there. Yes, in purely fishing terms, we are talking about feast and famine. But for variety and scenery it's hard to beat. I loved fishing the small pools above the Oykel Bridge where we could watch the fish leaping the falls. I probably spent as much time with the camera that morning as I did with the rod.

Hot and sunny

Rod-sharing was also fun, allowing time to think about the next session or read a book if the fishing is quiet. It's not often that you catch fish and improve on your tan in the same week. Those who holiday for the sunshine would never understand the game fishing mentality that greets a damp overcast morning with a sense of joy.

"Did you have good weather?" asked a neighbour when we returned.

"Terrible," I said with a shake of the head. "Hot and sunny every day."

Salmon Survival Game

Rob Donkin, one of my sons, is enjoying his break from university but I have not been able to get him out fishing. Instead he is building computer games. So I was chatting to him about salmon migrations and how tough it was for the fish to get back up the river. How do they avoid all those anglers?

Inspired, he came up with this Salmon Survival game. Why not try it? It's easy to learn but not so easy to avoid those anglers and their fishing flies. My fish keep getting caught on the lower beats. The river narrows the further you get. I also notice that the most successful anglers are the ones that keep their flies moving in the water. Just like real life then.

Angling

Angling Unity or Angling? These are the two names in the frame for a unified body to represent angling interests in England and Wales that is to be created from an amalgamation of six associations. The new body should be ready for legal registration in July if all goes to plan, becoming fully operational by January next year.

Pulling together six different groups in 15 months since the idea was first mooted by the Angling Conservation Association has been a minor miracle. The various boards who have buried any differences and self-interest for the good sense of having single more powerful voice, are to be congratulated.

The six associations in the move are:

Angling Conservation Association,
National Association of Fisheries and Angling Consultatives,
National Federation of Anglers,
National Federation of Sea Anglers,
Salmon and Trout Association,
Specialist Anglers' Alliance.


Now there is just the question of a name. Unless the group comes up with something it thinks is even better, my preference would be "Angling" so that way its interests would be rolled in to a single descriptive word.

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.

Mill dams, Marmite, tea and cigarettes

In the alphabet of life, fishing comes somewhere between the boy scouts and girls, or at least that was how it happened for me. Come to think of it, I would have barely enrolled in the cub scouts the first time I cast a hook over the pier at Whitby and hauled out some small silvery "kamikaze" with fins.

Earlier still I was pulling greedy sticklebacks from the park lake that would attach themselves obligingly to the brandling worms I had tied to a piece of string. This method seemed to catch bigger specimens than I could get with my net. The net was made from one of my grandma's stockings tied in a knot, threaded on a piece of wire and attached to a bamboo pole.

I would take the sticklebacks home in a jam jar where they would die within two or three days. I had more success when I put them in a plastic tank outside until a heavy frost entombed them within a block of ice. Perhaps this was when I first began to appreciate the merits of catch-and-release.

Pink underskirt

Once I slipped on a wet leaf by the side of the lake, finding myself fully immersed in the "mucky end" where all the leaves, litter and uneaten breadcrumbs left by the satiated ducks would gather.I must have been about three or four years old. My mother dragged me out, took off my sodden clothes and dressed me for the bus ride home in a pink underskirt she had bought on the market. It was the bus ride from Hell and the associated humiliation most probably scarred me for the rest of my days.

Apart from holiday fishing I did not begin to take the sport seriously until I bought my first fishing licence and joined a coarse-fishing club in my early teens. It was on one of those fishing trips I bought my first and only packet of cigarettes - 20 Embassy - just like the ones smoked by mum and dad.

I had gone with a friend to fish a mill dam just outside Ossett in West Yorkshire. For some reason we thought that our chances were better the earlier we arrived so we were on the bus at first light and on our way before the first of the shift workers.

No sooner were our floats in the water than we were both puffing away on our "lights." Within two or three smokes my face must have gone the colour of the pea-green dam water. I can't recall whether or not I finished the packet but it certainly cured me of the urge to experiment any further with cigarettes, although I did try smoking my dad's pipe with the same unfortunate results.

Marmite sandwiches

These coarse-fishing forays, sustained by Marmite sandwiches and a flask of tea, would usually produce a decent haul of perch and roach, never very big. I might have progressed to bigger things had it not been for adolescence and the intervention of progressive rock, underage drinking and girls.

But the fishing was merely neglected, not abandoned, and during a canal holiday with friends I had what I can only describe as my angling epiphany. I was admiring a fine chub I had taken from the Avon near Tewksbury when a friend challenged my ethics (not that I knew what ethics were at the time).

"What are you going to do with it?" he asked.

"Throw it back," I said.

"Don't you think that's unkind to the fish? Wouldn't it show more respect for the fish if you killed and ate it?" he said.

I thought he had a point, so it was not long after that I acquired my first trout rod. This one was a birthday present from my in-laws-to-be who regarded game fishing as a healthy shared pastime for a soon-to-be-married young couple.

Broon and gold

Soon after our marriage they invited us salmon fishing to Scotland, to the Kinnaird beat of the River Tay. It was early April and there were few springers around but Gill had a lovely 17 lb fish on the Wednesday.

We were spin fishing with "broon and gold" devons bought from Malloch's in Perth. On the Saturday I knew I was in the last chance saloon when I hooked in to something big. When I look back now at the tackle I was using it makes me weep. My rod was a bendy piece of hollow glass fibre, bought from a barber's shop in Batley, and my tatty coarse-fishing reel was falling apart.

The fish kept taking line and I was struggling to get it in. I was tiring after 15 or 20 minutes and thought the fish must be tiring too so I tightened up the tension on the reel, but far too much. The fish ran and parted company with the line. It was just before lunch and it was an understatement to say I was distraught.

Silver springer

Straight after lunch I went back to the very same spot, cast again and had a fish on. It felt like another good one. This time I left the tension well alone. When it came to the gaff (this was the late 70s) it was a superb 23lb silver springer.

A year later, on the same beat in the summer I was casting a salmon fly for the first time and hooked in to a fish of about 12 pounds that was at my feet when it shed the hook.

They still shed the hook now and then today but there has been a lot of water under a lot of bridges since those days. I'll never forget that first springer or indeed those early roach and perch. Fishing is something that gets in to your blood.

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.

Anadromous or Catadromous?

Here's a quiz question: what's the difference between an anadromous fish and a catadromous fish? If you know, move along to the next blog and try not to be smug with the rest of us because I didn't know the difference until a few moments ago when I was scrolling down this glossary of fish-related terms.

I was thinking about adding the glossary to the right hand links but I think it's just a bit too scientific in some respects and a bit obvious in others. I don't need to have sand defined for me.

Anyway for the record, salmon and sea trout are anadromous because they reproduce in fresh water and migrate to the sea in order to feed and grow. The common eel, on the other hand, is catadromous because it migrates from rivers to spawning grounds in the sea. So now I know.

This is possibly a more useful glossary for anyone just starting out in fly fishing.