Ancient practice of salmon netting captured on camera

It is a unique way of life that has all but disappeared.

- by Alison Campsie

Salmon net fishermen in a coble, a type of flat-bottomed boat, harvesting sea trout from a bag net at Boddin Point at the north end of Lunan Bay, Angus, 2025

Now, an Edinburgh-born photographer is set to publish a book that captures Scotland's salmon net fishermen for evermore.Colin McPherson has chronicled the salmon fishermen at work for three decades.

The result is Catching the Tide, a book which documents the generations-old practice of using traditional nets to catch wild Atlantic salmon in rivers and estuaries.

It is a practice in sharp decline. In the past, tens of thousands of people were employed in an industry which supplied Scottish salmon to the world, with the sight of nets on beaches and in coastal waters a familiar sight during the summer months of the fishing season.