The colder, wetter weather associated with the first quarter of the year doesn’t inspire many into sporting activity, but for fishermen, it’s a prime time to look out the waders.
Character actor Paul Young has enjoyed a 60+ year career on stage, television and radio but, to many of his fellow Scots, he’s best known as an angler. Fishing has been a real passion since he was a lad in Joppa, east Edinburgh; it’s an interest Paul was able to put to good use when presenting a succession of TV series on fishing for BBC Scotland, STV and subsequently the Discovery Channel.
“Scotland offers fishing to suit all anglers, really,” he insists. “You have game fishing – which tends to be salmon, sea trout, brown trout, rainbow trout – in both rivers and lochs, although there aren’t so many rainbow trout in rivers. You have course fishing in canals and some lochs where there are pike, perch, and roach. And then you’ve got sea-fishing all around the coast; fishing from boats from the likes of Eyemouth and Arbroath, or deep sea fishing off Orkney and Shetland, and shore fishing anywhere along the coast.”
If you’re coming to fish in Scotland’s rivers or lochs, however, Paul’s first piece of advice is that you buy a copy of Bruce Sandison’s Rivers and Lochs of Scotland: The Angler’s Complete Guide (Black and White Publishing: ISBN 1845027115) . “It’s got absolutely everything,” he insists – including, as he’s the first to admit, an introduction by him! “From the furthest loch north in Shetland to the most southerly bit of water in Scotland, it’s covered in his book.”
Having such an authoritative guide in your jacket pocket is useful because fishing conditions can vary a lot across the country. “There are parts of Scotland where salmon fishing starts on the 10th or 11th January, while the statutory trout season doesn’t start until the 15th March. There’s no closed season for course fishing in Scotland; in some of the big Highland lochs that have got pike, you can actually fish virtually all the year round. There are also quite a few ‘put and take’ fisheries – they’re not wild, they are stocked – that don’t open until the beginning of April to give the fish a chance to get over the winter and their spawning.”
While a lot of salmon fishing in Scotland is on ‘private’ land, this doesn’t mean it’s not available. “But you can’t just turn up and go salmon fishing,” Paul warns. “You need written permission, and that’s usually given out by the people who run the fishing. On the River Tay, for example, you pay so much a day for your fishing, and that includes permission.”
According to Paul, an invaluable website is Fish Pal (http://fishpal.com), which not only lists available fishing opportunities anywhere in Scotland but also tells you how much it’ll cost.
So does Paul have any personal favourite fishing spots in Scotland? “For salmon my favourite place is a little river in the North of Scotland; the Helmsdale is a smallish river, but it has a big reputation,” he says. “There’s not a pool on it that you don’t think: ‘Oh, I could get a fish here.’ It’s small enough to cover if the wind isn’t blowing into your face, and big enough to be difficult if it is. But it’s a delightful wee place to be.
“For trout fishing I like the Lake of Menteith because it has all the aspects of a wild fishery, but it’s run very well, and has a fine head of rainbow trout – and some brown trout as well. Even if every boat is out, you don’t feel crowded. And for me, living in Glasgow in the Central Belt, it’s just about an hour away.”
First published in Nocturne #1 (Winter 2015/16)
