Hello, Salar!

After a slow start, our fishing correspondent finds his luck is in on the Laxford

- David Profumo

Hello, Salar!After a slow start, our fishing correspondent finds his luck is in on the Laxford

THE first week in June— a full month earlier than my previous visits—I set off for the Laxford, Sutherland, one of Scotland’s most delightful spate rivers. By the road over Struie, rhododendron blooms were cavorting like can-can girls and the hillscape was irregularly scribbled with whin bushes, as if by a child’s bright crayon. It was still the northern springtime.

‘Bring everything’ had been the reply of my friend Robert the gillie when I asked for advice on what tackle to pack. There had been a week of large, vacillating spates, plus high tides that had brought in a run of spring salmon.

At least, for once, we would have water—but would this initial stock have sprinted through to the deep safety of the loch, leaving an interval before the summer grilse arrive and me merely standing on the stones waving my expensive stick over a series of unpopulated pools?

On the first morning, three of us had the entire river to ourselves. The level wasn’t ridiculously high and the pools were regaining definition. There were primroses on the moss bank toward the Sea Pool and a cuckoo was serenading near Mrs Coke’s (which I rechristened Mrs Cucu’s).