Salmon Fishing on the Tweed

A goal for my trip was to do some salmon fishing in Scotland. I brought equipment to do so (and didn't bring enough for the mountains.) In a talk I gave at St Andrews early on, I announced my interest and suggested that anyone who might know how I might achieve my goal of salmon fishing should talk to me. Edwin Brady came later and said his father was a long-time salmon fisherman and had rights to fish on the River Tweed, one of the most storied salmon rivers in the world.

When Edwin's father Allen visited St Andrews sometime in early March, he stopped in my office and we talked a bit about fishing and showed one another our flyboxes. At that point he invited me to fish the Tweed, though he said he would wait to call me until the Springers were in and the water was at a decent level.

Springers are the spring run salmon that may tend to be smaller than those picked up in the fall run, but which are fresh and bright and quite lively fighters. A good springer could go as much as 25 lbs, though generally they are smaller.


Scottish fishing is a highly structured affair since all water is private. This means that you always pay to fish, essentially renting the right to fish from one bank of the river in a particular section. For less popular waters (e.g. the Eden that flows through Cupar) you can buy a season ticket and have access to a stretch of river that is miles long. On more popular water, you purchase the right to fish a beat whose length is maybe 100 yards and only from one side of the bank or from a boat in that stretch. On the Tweed, beats can go for from around 40 pounds to as much as 400 pounds per day.
Each section (which may consist of many individual beats) is managed by a ghillie whose services are included in the price of the beat.


In late April, I got the call that I would be able to fish the river on 3rd of May. The section is known as Lower Lennel. THe Tweed here is the boundary between Scotland and England. I was scheduled to fish in the morning on the beat known as the Pot pool and then fish the Bottom Wellington (Wellie) in the afternoon. The ghillie was Douglas Tate (Dougie) and he guided me to the Pot Pool. After fishing the main bit by wading in from the Scottish side of the river, he took me out in a boat which I fished from for about an hour. We discovered that aside from fishing, we had a common interest in stalking. He is an avid deer stalker and, being a ghillie on the Tweed, has many connections. He helps in a culling operation in the Highlands where he killed more than a hundred and fifty Red Deer last year alone. Dougie left me to my own devices around 10:30 to and I fished hard, trying to get the hang of the highly technical Spey casts which are the fundamental technique for casting the 14 - 16 foot long double-handed rods used in salmon fishing -- but concentrating on trying to get good long drifts through the best holding water.

At lunch (1 PM) the anglers break for an hour. Allen met me on the bank of the Pot a bit after noon and we ate lunch together at the bothie shown behind us in the photo. My waders were leaking a bit and my arms were tired from casting and the rest was welcome. Allen had planned on coming up to the river with an old angling partner, but his friend was too ill to make the trip. The other anglers proved good company, including Christopher who sang me the 1955 number one hit Jimmy Young hit "The Man from Laramie".

After lunch, Allen walked upriver with me to the Bottom Wellie beat. He stayed with me for a bit while I fished my way down the beat, giving me some confidence that I was not doing too bad. The wind was blowing downstream (from my right to my left) and so I was doing my own cobbled version of the double spey cast where you drop the line upstream, then downstream and then out with a backhand. After Allen left, Dougie came by and spent part of his afternoon trying to teach me Spey casting techniques with a more suitable rig than my own. It is hard for me to convey how truly bad I am at taking instruction in physical activities. If you try to imagine taking dancing lessons from Fred Astaire and you might have some idea of my Spey casting lesson in the afternoon. As I beat the water, with each cast, prospects for actually catching a fish diminished to nil. I resigned myself to the idea that Spey casting is a highly technical skill and that I was getting excellent instruction. Dougie tried to teach me the single Spey cast, which I was no good at with the intermittent downstream wind, and also the circle-C which I was a bit better at.

One fish was caught and released in the morning (on the same beat I fished in the afternoon) and that was it for the day. Two had been caught the day before. Once hope I realized I had only photos of Allen and myself. I'll get more photos of the river and surrounding environs next time.

Extreme Geography of Britain

Is it possible? To drive north from St Andrews to John o' Groats, and then back south to Fort William to climb to the top of Ben Nevis, and then home again to St Andrews in a single weekend? It took some driving and some serious walking, and a bit of snow climbing, and some more driving, but I left Saturday morning around 9 AM and was back in St Andrews at 8 PM on Sunday. All together my route (by no means the most direct) included around 600 miles of driving on the exciting Scottish roads, with around thirty of those miles on the famous single tracks.


Duncansby Head is a mile or two form John o' Groats and is commonly considered (like Lands End in the south) the extreme point on North end of the British Isle. From Duncansby head, to the north you see the Orkney Islands and just a short walk south over the crest form the car-park is a view of the Duncansby Stacks and the Thirle Door, a large tunnel carved through the cliffs by the North Sea.



Duncansby head is, by all accounts, one of the largest seagull rookeries in Britain and there were thousands of birds. With the tide out, I managed to get down onto the stony beach and was able to make my way across slick seaweed covered rocks to the Thirle door. There were gulls (mostly Fulmars) nesting on every tiny ledge and in every nook and cranny on the sandstone cliffs. At any moment, looking down the shoreline, there were a hundred birds in the air with thousands more nesting.

With the summit at 4,406 ft, Ben Nevis is the highest point in all of Britain. I ascended the so called tourist route which follows the old pony path used to supply the observatory that used to sit on top. Being out of shape and with an unusual snowpack for this late in the year, was as much of a climb as I could handle. The pony path zigzags up the slopes just to the left of the right skyline of the peak as pictured here. I was glad to have a borrowed ice axe kicking steps up the steeper part of the climb from the Red burn to the summit plateau. The actual pony track was buried in snow from there up. It is ten miles round trip from the car and the elevation gain is nearly the entire height of the mountain.

I have climbed rock and ice and mountains since I was in my teens and Ben Nevis has always stood high in my esteem. I learned many techniques from Alan Blackshaw's Mountaineering: From Hill Walking to Alpine Climbing published by Penguin in 1970. This book has a decidedly British take on climbing including many photos taken in mountains of Britain. Ben Nevis is where modern ice climbing was first developed. This weekend was, according to more than one climber I spoke to on the summit, the best conditions seen in fifteen years with many of the big climbs that are rarely in good shape perfectly formed. I saw many groups top out onto the summit plateau from the north face. A number of the most difficult climbs in Britain saw ascents this past weekend.