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Camilla Loch in Fife

Little known, this loch has monsters in it's depths! Alan Robertson, now resident in Canada, had a day to remember

I have many memories of my childhood in Fife cycling around the many lochs in the area; Kinghorn, Lindores, Raith Lake all populated with big pike and perch. Pike were always my interest in those days taking my biggest fish of 12lbs from Lindores Loch, now a trout fishery. I hooked and lost a very big pike in the mill dam at Raith Lake in Kirkcaldy, it never fails to amaze me how big fish can grow in very small bodies of water.

One loch that I got to know well was Camilla Loch which I still visit it when I return to my home turf each year. The loch has been stocked with rainbows for many years and it holds some good brown trout, the loch record being a healthy 11lb fish. Fishing for pike I often caught good rainbows, my best being a 5lb fish.

Mysteriously though, over the years, the stockie rainbows kept disappearing. They didn't stock with small fish and I think I know why, the loch has a few very large pike.

The loch is quite deep, up to 27 feet in places and the feeding is pretty good, lots of shrimp and snail to fatten the trout. Some of the big browns have grown to look like ferox with big hooked jaws suggesting the kind of water in which you had to be a bit of a bruiser to survive.

How do I know there are really big pike in Camilla Loch? Well, back in 1962 as a 17 year old lad I was fishing Camilla with a mate. Up until then my best fish was a mere 2lbs, nothing to write home about really.

I was fishing with a rather flashy spinner when I saw a huge fish attack my lure, hitting it from the side. The pike didn't swallow the lure, it nipped at it and got hooked in the lip. Surprisingly it didn't fight very hard, it was so heavy it just cruised off taking line at will. The fight went on for about 15 minutes, it swimming off, me reeling it back. All the time I was calling to my mate for help but he didn't respond, the fish was at the bank, tired, laying in on it's side ready to be taken and I needed help. The bank had a steep slope and I just could not get the fish ashore. I tried to lift it out but the fish just slipped from my grasp time after time until inevitably the knot gave. All I could do was watch as the monster sank into the depths with my expensive spinner still dangling form it's lip.

Later I suffered the final ignominy of my friends disbelief, he hadn't heard me, he didn't come to help, he didn't witness the struggle. He didn't believe me. The fish was real all the same and close on 50 years later I recall the whole incident as if it were yesterday. Such a big fish in such a small loch.

The old gamekeeper who let me fish Camilla for pike has since retired and I am obliged to fish for trout when I return each year to the Kingdom of Fife, but I know the reason why the rainbows keep disappearing. Somewhere in the deeps of Camilla Loch lurks a pike with a piratical glint in it's lip.