The Spey.

What can you say about the Spey.  A superb river that could have been purposely designed for salmon fly fishing.

I was lucky in as much as my late boss had a week in September on one of the best beats, namely Delfur on the lower endofthe river, I think it was  owned by Eagle Star Insurance Company  Divided into five or so beats it was a perfect fly fishing venue holding, then at least, good numbers of fish.  There were four gillies on the beat as I recall head of which was Willie Main and at least one, possibly two of his sons.

Five rods fished and I gillied for the remaining rod and was also allowed to fish in the evening as the main rods were strictly nine till five. That ws nice to have the place to myself at one of the best times of the day.  One year the five rods accounted for 128 fish in the week but on another year, despite loads of fish flinging themselves all over the place we only recorded a dozen.  The fish just would not take.   Willie reckoned they needed a frost to put them in the mood.  I recall too that most evenings a van would turn up to take any fish kept for the smokery.  Having said that not all the fish were fresh by any means.

I can’t remember the names of all the pools but I do remember that one named Hollybush was a nice pool to fish and wade.   At the upstream end of the beat was another pool called Sourdon, not sure if thats howit was spelt mind you .  Not so much a pool as a long smooth powerful glide.   I went there one afternoon with Mike Lunn  he from the Test, and he started in at the head of the glide.  Fish were in the mood and he quickly had one and after landing it.he gave me the rod and urged me to have a go too which I did and was into a fish  after a few casts.  That set the trend for the afternoon as we mocked each other if we didn’t get a fish after half a dozen casts or took too long in landing the fish.  It was easy fishing, just cast across, let the fly swing and wallop.  No Scandis, No skaggits or shooting heads, no £1000 rods or reels that could stop a train, none of the bullshit we are told we need today to catch a fish.  If salmon are present, in anything like a taking mood then you are likely to catch one if you are reasonably competent.

They are basically stupid.in my opinion and If any of them behaved like a barbel or chub and headed for the nearest snag or simply turned and ran downstream without stopping you wouldn’t land many except perhaps the smaller ones.

Another of the pools there was called Two Stones where I gillied for someone one morning. I think he caught one fish and had other offers with fish showing all over the place  It was a fairly big pool and at lunchtime I mentioned it to Willie suggesting there might be a couple of hundred fish in the pool. “ Nay lad “he said, “more like a couple of thousand.”  He was serious too I assure you

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  Lovely river, like most not as good as it was  perhaps but still produces reasonable numbers of fish and would love to fish it again sometime.  Fished the Tay,Tweed, Nith and a couple of the Solway rivers.

Took my Labrador on one of those trips and on the first morning the daft dog tried to jump a barbed wire fence and slit her belly open.  Had to find a vet asap which proved somewhat expensive.   Never seemed to bother the dog in the slightest after she was sewn up though.