Like father like son!

This is essentially an extraordinary account of Father and Son fishing a remote river in Northern Scotland a month apart and their personal experiences in catching two large salmon – by Peter and Ben Sturt.

The Father

I had been anticipating some wonderful fishing due to the wet weather that was falling on a small remote river in the north of Scotland in the first few days of June 2006. However, as is often the case, the weather improved, for those in our party who were not fishing, and continued to improve as we drove up on the Saturday. Sunday was dry and sunny of course as was every other day of that week and water levels were low – not a good omen for the week’s fishing ahead.

It seemed to be a good idea to get up before breakfast on Monday the 5th and exercise the rod, the reel, the fly and my wrist. It was a lovely morning, overcast, generally not too midgy and an air temperature of about 11 degrees C. I decided to start at a pool just below some falls. It is a bit of a scramble to get down onto the rocks at the head of this pool and the midges are usually bad in that particular spot. I had on a 10lb tippet and decided to put on a size 10 Ally Shrimp (double hook) that was reputed to have been a popular fly the week before. The head of this falls pool has a fair amount of spray with thundering water spectacularly cascading down a drop of some 30 – 40 feet or so. A resident dipper graced me by flying up the falls as I started to fish. I fished the white water at the head of the falls for only 5 minutes and then worked downstream keeping very close to the left bank as I cast across and round. The pool very quickly settles down from its turbulent start - and the tail where it widens out considerably cannot be more than 20 yards from the head.

I cast across the pool to put the fly into some slack water behind a large rock so that it would swing round to the tail. I almost immediately got a take followed by a silver leviathan of a fish with an impossibly huge tail leaping into the dawn air. I could hardly believe that I had hooked anything so large as we both fought to gain the mastery of the other. The fish charged around the pool and thrashed on the surface once or twice as if it was trying to dislodge the fly with its tail. At one stage it went hull down and to all intents and purposes, immovable, into the deepest part of the pool near the falls before coming boiling up into two more breathtaking leaps before I was able eventually to bring it to the bank after some 30-40 minutes. My legs felt like jelly as I came face to face with this beautiful fresh run deep-bellied cock fish still covered in sea lice and clearly bigger than the 16lb scales I had with me. I released the hook and measured his length – it exceeded three feet. We then both recovered slowly as I held him by the tail and supported him under his belly into the flow of water waiting for him to gather his strength and finally return to his element with a strong sweep of his tail.

I returned for breakfast in somewhat of a daze and, comparing his measurement against past catches, was told that my fish probably weighed 221/-2 lbs. Our small party then went out emboldened with much excitement to our individual beats. I struck gold again in the morning and afternoon in different pools with two more fish of 11 and 15 lbs both caught on a size 12 Ally Shrimp and released again to the water. This was a day I shall never forget and made the more pleasurable since the fish were all caught on a beautifully finished 13 ft Sage rod that my son (a rod builder) had built for me and completed the week before.

The Son

Having only fished for salmon once before on the Taw in Devon, which yielded an 11lb springer, I was itching to get up to this wild river in the north of Scotland not only for its surprisingly good run of fish for a small river but the pure remoteness and the whole experience. To me fishing is firstly about the location, which must be remote and wild with its indigenous wildlife: then secondly, the fish. I’d rather spend a week in the wilds seeing fish but not catching one, than a day in comparative civilisation catching a big bag!

To be on your own in the north of Scotland with nothing but big skies and mountains is as good as it gets. Having had a guided tour on Sunday of the water for the coming week, and seeing fish in the falls, I couldn’t wait for Monday morning to arrive and it did, very quickly, at 4.30am. I had to get out onto the water and before breakfast landed a perfect fresh run silver bullet of a Grilse.

It was day 2 of the trip that my story really begins. The river was very low after weeks of no rainfall although we had seen salmon holding in the larger pools. The morning was warm, 14 degrees and cloudy, I had fished almost the whole of a pool down to the croy when on the final retrieve a sharp pull resulted in a fresh run grilse which made one quick run and jump and relieved itself of my hook.

Something made me cast again in the same place: I do not know whether it was heeding earlier advice to spend 60% of the time in the tail of the pool, or that it just looked liked a good place for a fish to lie.

So I made that one cast and as my silver stoat fly landed I began twitching the fly across the current. My mind was in neutral as the fly swept just passed the end of the entrance to the croy. As I was thinking about the next pool, the water around my fly just seemed to disappear into a hole followed by an almighty thump that yanked me out of my daydream.

The hole rapidly turned into a fish that appeared to freeze for a split second before torpedoing upstream. At this point, in some form of trance, I was still examining my line that entered the water a few yards in front of my tip, yet the fish was already 40 + yards away upstream still going strong, it would have gone further if it hadn’t been for the very low shallows bought on from lack of rain. With a slight pause the fish then turned and high tailed back down to the bottom of the pool where it leapt for the first time, with me frantically winding about 30 yards of line behind the fish! Being only the second salmon I’d ever hooked in my life I was shocked at its sheer size as, almost in slow motion, its vast silver flank and spade of a tail exploded from the water and then submerged again beneath the surface. My first thought was how do I control this fish let alone get it to the bank.

The next 15 minutes was a very private battle between me and the fish, me jabbering please don’t come off, please don’t come off, and the fish doing its best to rid itself of my size 14 silver stoat. Every time I got the fish to within a few yards of my bank a few sweeps of its tail saw it 20-30 yards away again. I had never had to use a drag on any reel before in all my time fishing, so for the first time very gingerly I started to increase the drag. The problem was that I only had a 12lb tippet and I knew this fish was well above that so the first time the fish ran with the rod hooping even further I realised that I couldn’t afford to put too much drag on in fear of breaking the tippet. My next bit of inexperience to add to the flurry of thoughts going though my head was to get my landing net ready. Once opened I immediately realised that the fish was never going to fit in it.

We continued our battle until finally I managed to get downstream of the fish in about 12 inches of water, where I hoped to be able to restrain it and remove the fly. As I guided the fish back down towards me, it powered off again into the current and did this probably 5 more times; finally on the sixth time, it eventually rolled over onto its side and I knew that it was time for me to end the fight and get the fish in if it was to have a chance of surviving. By now I was a bag of nerves and pretty tired, but the fish had lost all its fight so I guided it towards the shallow water beside the bank.

The problem was that whilst holding the butt of my rod, I couldn’t reach the tail of the fish, it was too far away, so throwing rod and caution to the wind I stretched for its tail. Luckily I managed to get a hand on it and another under the belly of this fine hen fish, free of sea lice, but still with bright silver flanks. As I extracted the hook, I felt as if I was being watched and being willed to return her to her place of birth so she could continue her journey.

I felt a sudden pang of worry as I cradled her gently in the water trying to get as much oxygen as possible back across her gills. I sat in the water and placed her on my lap, because she didn’t seem to have enough strength to keep level with me. I brushed water across her gills to replace the oxygen to give her strength to continue on the journey. Eventually after a long but incredibly personal 15 minutes, I felt the power returning to her tail as she struggled to break free, I finally let her go - she hung in shallow water for a few seconds before gliding off back to the shelter and safety of the deeper water.

As my father’s scales had already been found to be inadequate, I did not bother to weigh her, so measured her length against the side of my rod. Just after releasing the fish I met up with a friend 10 minutes later and later still the Bailiff. We found that the mark on the rod showed the fish was more than 40 inches long. Comparing this length against records of some fish caught in the past, they estimated my fish to be about 30 1/2 lbs.