Say A Prayer

To catch a salmon Giles Catchpole seeks help from above

- Giles Catchpole

ON THE OTHER hand, there is always the Spey.

It has hosted some good sport this season. Including some large fish. Which is very exciting. Last year, of course, I was not there because I was tussling with a simply enormous trout in Iceland and shoals of salmon flooded into the river from the far-off Atlantic to take the distilleries tour and to frustrate the local anglers by jumping over their leaders and ignoring their lures.

But now we’re back and we are ready for some serious Spey action.

Monday dawned warm and bright. What is ideal salmon fishing weather? Well, you have to ask yourself what actually is the central purpose of salmon fishing? If, for you, the key objective is to catch salmon then the weather in Scotland will be largely immaterial because you will be in Russia catching dozens of fish in a day and setting yourself a level of experience which you will quite possibly never see again.

If you are in Scotland, on the other hand, warm and bright is absolutely fine. It may not be ideal for provoking fish into enthusiastic action but warm and bright means that we are going to be able to fish comfortably for the long hours necessary to actually connect with a fish.