By Bill Currie
Spring Salmon; Northern Sutherland
The North is another country; they do things differently there.
(With apologies to L P Hartley)
The Great Glen, which runs across Scotland from Inverness to Fort William is a dramatic geographical feature of the Highlands. South of this famous glen, with its large lochs, - Ness, Oich and Lochy-, lie the Central Highlands and from the eastern side of these run the major early spring rivers of Scotland, - the Tay, the Angus Esks, the Dee, the Spey and, indeed, the Ness itself. North of this great east-west glen, the Highlands take on a different character, featuring less massive hills but giving us more variety. In the northern highlands, again, we find an east-west distinction. Spring fish run the eastern-flowing waters and shun the western ones. The division in the northern highlands, however, goes a little further. A new component comes into the equation, since a range of smaller spring waters flowing north emerge, - rivers which are often overlooked by early spring fishers, - and these smaller waters have a lot to tell us about the state of spring salmon runs. These early salmon rivers of the northern highlands also have something to teach us about fishing for early springers. In a sense, they contradict much of what Tweed, Tay and Dee fishers would take as received wisdom.
The whole northern area is fascinating from an angling point of view. On the east is a coastline showing long, clearly marked out firths, each with one or more consistent spring river flowing into them. I need only mention the Ness, the Beauly and the rivers of the Kyle of Sutherland, particularly the Oykel and the Cassley to make the point. Above the Kyle of Sutherland, the coastline becomes more regular with long stretches of sand between Dornoch and Helmsdale, for example, and it is in this reach that the productive river Brora meets the sea. Further north come the long ranges of cliffs, at the south end of which the remarkable Helmsdale emerges from its strath. As you go north, you are conscious of the landscape and the seascape changing. Highlands give way to high moorlands and they are succeeded by lower and more level heathlands. The rivers take up a new direction of flow as this landscape change takes place and at the same time they alter their character. When you reach the Thurso, flowing north through the Caithness moors, you are conscious of having reached a kind of extreme. If you were to fish your way north through Ross and Sutherland, hunting for spring salmon, you would become aware also that techniques and approaches also change as you progress. In many years of fishing in the north in early spring, I have accepted these changes without fully being able to explain them. Let me tell you what I mean.
One of the first principles I learned when I was fishing for early springers in the Tay and Dee and Tweed was that the best technique was to go deep with the fly and fish slowly. Fair enough; it seemed to work well. It was easy to accept that as a golden rule. My early visits to the Thurso, Brora and Helmsdale, however, kept producing what seemed to be aberrations. For instance, I actually saw fish coming up to the fly, when the textbooks said they should not.
I well remember the first time I saw an early spring salmon salmon rising to the fly and breaking the surface like a May fish as it did so. It was on the Helmsdale, but within a short time it happened again to me on the Brora. I thought that these first cases were maverick, but it has happened fairly often now, not only to me, but to a whole range of friends fishing in the north. I have seen fish rising to flies and missing them in February and March -very unlike anything you might see on the Dee in early spring. Of course, they do not all do that, but a sufficient number do to make it clear that this is one way in which northern salmon behave differently and make us want to fish differently for them.
The fishers are also different in Sutherland. I have come across two or three individuals in the north who insist on fishing floating lines in the early season, albeit with waddingtons attached. I mean, floating lines are summer tackle. Do they know something other fishers do not? I'm a sort of half way fisher in spring. I hate deep lines and I often fish a neutral line from February on, -that is, one which settles into the water and does not sink fast. It's really all wrong according to the textbooks, but it works in Sutherland. Water temperatures might be below forty and the air not much above that in March or April. Saner people on Dee or Tay would prudently 'think deep', but things are definitely done differently in the far north.
There is an other slightly weird practice, -'backing up'. I first learned to 'back up' on the Thurso on what some people rather rudely called the 'dead waters'. These long areas of slow flow to a Lowland eye look difficult to fish. Indeed, sometimes they are so featureless at first sight that you might walk past, asking where the pool actually is. Backing up makes you start at what might be the tail of a long pool and, casting a good line out, you retrieve by long stripping as you walk slowly backwards up the bank. It doesn't make much fishing sense, really, yet it works splendidly. The logic of it is all wrong. Your line has every chance of passing over the fish before the fly. In progressing backwards up the bank, you are perhaps seen by the fish several casts before you actually present your fly to it. Yet on a north Sutherland river I have had nine February springers in a week and seven of them have come to the backed up fly.
The speed of the backed up fly is quite fast. Indeed, if there is any stream at all, the combination of walking backwards and handlining can produce a fly which swings in a very determined way across the pool and in no way looks like the slow and deep fly we are used to fishing further south. It is tremendously thrilling to hook fish on the backed up fly. Sometimes there is a bulge or a chase, but more usually there is just a solid heave and you are into anything from eight pounds to twenty plus, fresh from the sea. I do not think much if any of that would happen south of the great divide.
And have you hard of fishing the Collie Dog? Many fishers will know this type of fly well. It consists, really, of a long curled frond of black collie dog hair, perhaps five, perhaps seven inches long when it is stretched out. The old models were dressed on single hooks, but today the Collie is usually on a light plastic tube. This fly is often fished by backing up, or by stripping. It is a great fly for a fish which has refused your conventional waddington or tube. Indeed, some Helmsdale fishers I know keep their Collie Dog in reserve, almost in secrecy, and eventually confide in you and say, 'Well, it's time for the Collie Dog, I think,' as if it were some ultimate secret weapon which didn't give the salmon much of a chance. The north is the home of this odd, light eel-like fly, fished fast and fished shallow. You will see it on the Oykel, the Cassley, the Brora and the Helmsdale. It works there, but, south of the great divide it is hardly used at all.
The way early springers run is interesting and varies from river to river. Some patterns emerge. The earliest salmon of all seem to run in the middle of winter. Early fish like those which run the Tay do a very Highland thing and go straight up to the loch fifty miles above the sea. On Loch Tay in mid-January, you might well catch one on opening day. On the Ness system, winter-run springers do the same thing. They run through some of the lovely pools on the Ness , and, in decent years, are caught early in the Moriston or at the very head of Loch Oich. Generally speaking early springers run slowly, - or so they say on most southern rivers. After many years of fishing up north, I am beginning to doubt this as a general principle. I have seen runs going past me on the Helmsdale like rockets. I have been startled by heavy fish leaping past me in the streams. Cold water in the north does not make fish run slowly. They run as if they had to get to the head of the system without delay.
The interesting thing on smaller rivers in the north is where the 'head' of the system actually is. On rivers with a loch on them , like the Brora, there is no doubt. Fish running through the lower river do not go further in the early spring than the head of Loch Brora. On this system, of course, the whole lower river can fish well in the early weeks of the season. It is a river on which you always feel you are in with a chance of a newcomer in a pool taking your fly. But I am in little doubt that the first springers waste no time in going to the loch.
On rivers with a clear barrier, like the Kildonan falls on the Helmsdale or falls on the lower Cassley or the Oykel, there is a very clear 'head' below which salmon wait for water temperatures to rise enough for them to run the falls. What are these conditions prompting fish to run? I used to be fairly sure it was a matter of temperature and I convinced myself that it would be March or April before salmon would run, say, the Kildonan Falls. Well, I stood one February week and watched salmon running these falls, heavy and cold as they were. Some of my most cherished rules in fact prove to be pretty ropey when I apply them to rivers of the north. I have to conclude that the northern salmon also have an idiosyncratic way of operating; they clearly know rules the Tay and Dee do not.
Fly size is also very curious in Sutherland. Rules of thumb are comfortable things, and they make many fishers tie on a bigger waddington in colder water and a smaller one in warmer. Spring flies are usually associated with rules about the weight of the fly and its length. The heavier fly is suited to the colder water, says the rule, and the lighter to the warmer river. Well, I found out early that in Rob Wilson's shop in Brora where I used to buy most of my waddingtons, tied on stainless steel wire rather than forged steel shanks, that the most popular tray for the Helmsdale was the one with the larger sizes and the popular Brora flies were often half the size of the Helmsdale ones. These rivers are only twelve miles apart. There are differences, of course. The Helmsdale is far more peaty than the Brora and it is a bigger river, - all of which suggests that theories of size and weight of fly, based crudely on water temperature, are, to choose a bad metaphor, barking up the wrong tree. I think my next theory about fly size for early springers will be based on the wind. Helmsdale is a far windier valley than the Brora. Therefore, larger flies are dictated by wind force. It would be a bizarre idea, but my stable, carefully tried out theories from Dee and Tay have all gone out of the window, so I might as well trust an apparently silly one.
The rivers of the north in February, March and April are, with luck, well supplied with water. February and March fishing in the north does need rain, because there is seldom any great weight of snow on the hills of Sutherland to feed the river for weeks and weeks, as there is, for instance on the Spey and the Dee. Low water on small rivers, such as the Halladale or the Borgie can be daunting. It can worry us on the larger Helmsdale too. But, given a reasonable ration of rain, the far northern rivers can outperform the rest of Scotland in early spring, mile for mile. In 1997, for example, rivers like the Borgie and Halladale produced spring salmon when hardly anything was happening elsewhere in Scotland. Not only do they do things differently in the far north, their salmon seem to migrate in at a different time from a different ocean.
By standards set south of the Great Glen, the northern waters are small. But they are distinctive. They have their own dates ( many open weeks before the southern waters); their salmon like different looking flies; they like them fished in a very individual way, again in contradiction of the southern rules. All this adds to their allure. In the last few years, when spring salmon have declined seriously further south, these Sutherland waters have seemed dangerously close to becoming identified as Valhalla. I suggest we add a new caveat to our southern rule book, - 'vive la difference' . I think we should seriously consider enriching our own fishings , wherever they be, by adopting the idiosyncratic salmon approaches of the far north.
You can find more articles in the archive under A Line On Scottish Fishing.
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