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Here are a series of articles previously published.
Hooked on Fishing
First published in the Strathspey and Badenoch Herald. 5th August 2004.
Can a farm exist without orange string? It is used to bind together the very fabric of a farm - fences, gates and coos, and it's often the only thing keeping the farmers breeks up.This thought went through my mind one day as I fished for the elusive salmon. Odd thought, but it does give you a keek into the mind of that chap you may have watched from time to time wading belly deep in the freezing cold waters of the river Spey.
Marginal insanity has to be a prerequisite to becoming a dedicated salmon fisher, though some anglers aren't totally mad. Take John Regan from Dulnain Bridge for example, landed a 7lb sea trout in the Lurg, now that is the kind of fish that mad anglers dream of and sane anglers catch! The truly sane anglers of course go after the brown trout. There have been some excellent bags of trout with fish of up to 3lbs taken in recent weeks, rising freely to pale olives and badger patterns. These wild trout are at their best just now, fat and fit.
I hear that the Spey is about to have its own web site on the net like the ones on the Tweed and Tay, as is the Grantown Association. I thought the 'nets' had been bought out, just shows you how technological I am. On the subject of nets I had a small grilse last week and I mean small. The fish was clearly net marked across the back and tail. Isn't it worrying after all the time and effort taken to preserve our precious salmon stocks that fish are still being intercepted at sea by legal and illegal nets not to mention packs of marauding seals?
What more can we do as anglers except get mad at the powers that be that turn a blind eye to the continuing ravages of the Atlantic salmon. Maybe it is time that politicians and their blinkered lackeys were reminded that there are four and a half million anglers in this country, mostly of voting age.
Some of those millions of anglers have met with success in our river in the last two weeks. Salmon have been scarce but one of our visiting anglers, Mr Hoult, had a bonzer week and bagged a 19 pounder, an eight pounder, a 5lb grilse and three sea trout to 6lbs. Mark Humble had a 5lb sea trout and our local yokel, Andrew Starr, showed consummate sanity with six sea trout to 19lbs. What is your secret Andrew? Apart from dedication, determination, skill and knowledge, it can't all be luck.
I mentioned young Blair Banks in my last article and predicted there would be more to report. I would like to add my congratulations to the 'Strathy' piece elsewhere this week. What a result. Grant Mortimer of Mortimer's Fishing Tackle store on Grantown High Street had better watch out or Blair will be opening up a tackle shop with all the prizes he has won. (Blair won the junior Spey casting championship at the 2004 Game Fair)
On a final note, to give you an insight into how a salmon anglers mind works, I clocked the new posh bus shelter in Grantown Square. Better watch out it would make a great conservatory extension to one of our fishing huts. There you have it. Next time you see me wading belly deep in the frozen river Spey you will know that I am either pondering higher matters or calculating, Wily Coyote style, how to catch a fish (I favour the Acme Harpoon Gun myself) or enumerating the number of ways orange string can be used on a farm. It does help to occupy one's mind.
9th December 2004 Strathie.
What is the fascination with soap operas and reality TV these days? Are our lives so humdrum that vicarious keyhole peeking is all we can muster. In winter as you travel to and from work and the fishing session is closed there can be no escape from the TV to the tranquillity of the riverside, the swish of rushing water, the scream of the reel as the rod bends into a fish.
Weekends can become especially precious when the short daylight hours are to be savoured and we can make our escape from 'the box'. With dogs in tow I went for a drive in my old banger this weekend, reacquainting myself with the fabulous rivers of the North East, the Findhorn, the Spey, Deveron, Don, Ythan and Dee, stopping every now and again to watch water flow in winter rush, imagining what might lurk beneath in the murky depths.
In Sunday driver mode I meandered along the coastal route straining for a glimpse of the famed beats and saw in the estuaries of each river the vestiges of the recent past, the man made stretches of lower river and estuary netting stations. There were fish for all including seals, otters, ospreys and fishermen then. Until scientific prodding and prying discovered the mother lode where salmon go to feed and grow of the coast of Greenland and the Faroes these rivers supported communities that derived their living from netting and from angling.
Today the work of the Atlantic Salmon Trust and others has been successful in buying out the deep sea nets off the Faroe Islands, the drift nets off the Northumbrian coast and many of the estuary nets on the Scottish rivers. As an angler it gladdens my heart to know that salmon can migrate to and from their feeding grounds, safe from the predation of industrial fishing while the estuary netting station lie defunct.
Reports from the Spey suggest that spawning activities this year has been prodigious with large numbers of fish reported in the Rothiemurchus Estate waters and I have seen similar sights in the Dulnain above Sluggan.
On the Deveron, where a 61lb fish was taken in 1923 by Mrs Morrison, the second largest rod-caught salmon and biggest fly caught fish, there was a report of an equally large fish caught and returned unharmed in the 2004 season. One of our Grantown club members reported hooking into a exceptional fish on the Findhorn, a leviathan of a fish that toyed with our anglers emotions for a while before smashing his line.
These large fish have negotiated the journey to and from the feeding grounds at sea on several occasions, proving the effectiveness of recent conservation efforts. All of which bodes well for the future. Nature is resilient and given a chance it will put to right the ravages that humanity has brought upon itself. Yet more work has to be done.
There are still nets taking fish in Scotland off the North and South Esk and in the Highlands, some indeed administered by the Scottish Executive. There are still nets taking fish off the Irish coast intercepting fish destined for Wales and the South and South West of England. There are still boats fishing Scottish coastal water, taking fish illegally intercepting entire runs.
Fry and smolt are still farmed unwisely in fresh water lochs and raised in sea lochs to the detriment of sea trout stocks in particular through the proliferation of sea lice, disease and deterioration of the wild stock gene pool.
The reality for angling is that the salmon recovery is ready to go forward given half a chance. We should accept no soft soap from government dragging its heels about legislation to curb the continuing abuses or in the provision of financial support to those seeking to re-establish the world renowned status of angling in Scotland and its multi million pound contribution to the rural economy.
Failure to stay alert will bring more misery into our angling lives than watching poor Alfie living in a chip van in 'Eastenders' at Christmas, will jar our nerves more than listening to some wannabe wailer on ''Pop Idol'. Reality for us is vigilance, staying switched on, staying with the programme. Reality for the angling fraternity is in the seas around our coasts and in the rivers and lochs of our island nation.
How Black was my Valley.
George Melly sets me to thinking. First Published on Spinfish in 2004.
I have just finished reading a book by George Melly, “Hooked”, a recommended first class read and ramble through a long fishing career. Towards the end of the book Melly briefly touched upon the Miners Strike. Loath as I am to bring politics into fishing or to say anything good about Mrs T, I have to say that every cloud has to have a silver lining, although in this instance I am sure the benefit was unplanned. The policy of breaking Trades Union power was bound, by necessity, to break heavy industry in Britain. Since the Industrial Revolution British industry had had carte blanche to dump its waste on our green and pleasant land, polluting our seas and shores, our rivers and the very air we breathe.
As a boy brought up in a mining community in the Kingdom of Fife I saw at first hand the ravages of human exploitation of nature’s bounty. Unrestricted by law, coal mines belched out their black waste and drained the sumps of the coal measures onto our beaches and into our rivers, streams and lochs. Heavy industry abstracted clear water, returning it duly processes into chemical slurry to the streams of their origin, to kill all life in the aquatic environment.
My life long fascination with clean water, rich with life and fit, fighting fish, probably derives from my boyhood memories of rivers that you could smell before you could see them. On a school rugby tour to Abertillary in the Welsh Valleys I witnessed the same fetid outpouring, the gaseous smell of the mining regurgitations. A few years later, on my first visit to Glasgow, I saw the open sewer that was the Lower Clyde and in the mid seventies in London I witnessed the Thames ooze under Tower Bridge.
Melly is right of course, some one will write a book, How Black Was My Valley, maundering on about the halcyon days of the mine filled, man wasted valleys and how good those days were to live in. I for one won’t read such a book, I remember seeing the film ‘How Green Was My Valley’ and recall the mournful call of the siren as the pit disaster fell upon the community and remember the same in my home community when the Michael Pit Disaster brought despair to our families and friends. In the Welsh valleys all life came secondary to the extraction of coal, the life of our rivers was inconsequential when measured against the human need for power and profit.
On a recent visit to Kingdom of Fife I drove through what was once familiar Spawn of Mordor countryside, now it is green and lush farm land. The rivers, once turgid grey affairs, flow clean through fronds of green weed. Trout rise in the evening, sea trout run and salmon leap in Fife and in the valleys of Wales. A recent Fishing Report in the fishing press detailed the increasing catches of salmon on the Lower Clyde and you can stand on the terraces of the House of Commons and see salmon leap in the arms of Old Father Thames once more.
Loath as I am to say thank you to Mrs T, so I won’t, at least some benefit accrued from those policies of the Eighties. Time in politics as in life is a great healer and after almost twenty years we can see for our selves, that given time, Nature is the greatest healer of all. Our seas and shores, our rivers, lochs and land, the air we breathe, can be purified by nature’s law alone, even in our lifetime and certainly in that of future generations, if humanity will just give thought to the ravages of our avaricious burrowing.
Regeneration of The Spey First published on Spinfish in 2004
Scientists have cogitated, masticated and vegetated on the benefits of stocking programmes. River authorities cannot agree who is to pay, for what and from where brood stock should be taken from or where fry should be planted out for fear that one beat would gain advantage over the next? Nero reputedly fiddled whilst Rome burned.
In the mid 1990's the net were bought out at Spey Bay and closed down. Passively and expectantly we waited for the benefits to accrue, ignoring the fact that drift nets, stake nets and high sea pirates were taking their toll of fish stocks. Ignoring the fact that stock regeneration might need a helping hand, those people of science and authority chose to to follow Nero's policy and fiddle.
I have read Victorian anthologies of gargantuan bags of fish, and the stories of the big fish1920s. I note too that many rivers were actively stocked in those days and netting occurred at sea, in the estuaries and upstream, yet rod catches were prodigious. The genetic integrity of the stock clearly did not fail.
In Victorian times they could afford to have staff because they paid peanuts for labour intensive activity such as netting, stripping and fish husbandry. Today we pay more than peanuts for the privilege of enjoying our fishing, yet I see profit taking dictating a reluctance to employ and pay decent wages to staff to carry out the essential process of regeneration of stocks. Wait a minute, what's this?
Tulchan hatchery is full, Kincriag is in operation, keep nets have been put in the river for September anglers to donate their catch to the hatchery, netting in the main river, electrofishing in the tributaries. 2 million parr to be planted out in in the river next season.
I smell the scent of fiddles burning, I get the sense that action is being seen to be taken. You beauties you woke up, more power to your elbow!
I hope to live to see the day when "you can walk across the river on the backs of fish without getting your feet wet". All old Mother Nature needs a little help, then off course, she gets on with it.
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