Angling Page
Hey man, you'll never catch fish if your flies are not in the water.
Me with my biggest fish so far. Caught at North Third reservoir in central Scotland near Stirling, on an intermediate line with a size 12 Mosaic Viva fly fished just below the surface. It would be nice to say I caught it after spotting it and casting to it but no, my fly just happened to be in the right place at the right time, I was lucky!
A basket of wild brown trout caught on Loch of Swanney in Orkney, not all caught by me, in fact probably none caught by me! Orkney has to be one of my favourite places.
You've got to look the part, haven't you?
My angling started when I was about eleven. My cousin and his dad, my uncle, used to take the pair of us to the river Balvaig at Strathyre and Balquidder, Rob Roy country. It was quite an expedition in those days, the early 1950's. We would leave Falkirk about 5 a.m. by bus to travel the 12 miles or so to Stirling then it was by steam train to Strathyre or Balquidder depending on whether we were going to fish the top or the bottom of the river. I think the train left about 6 a.m. and took an hour for the journey, passing through Bridge of Allen, Doune and Callandar before we disembarked, then it travelled on to Oban via Crianlarich. By the time we walked from the station to the river it would be just after 7 a.m. and the first thing that had to be done, was collect firewood for the fire, a can of the best tasting tea you could ever get. No teabags then, just a handful of tea leaves and sugar chucked in the can as it came to the boil and yes, a matchstick floating in the water to keep out the smoke taste. Don't ask me how!
It was all bait fishing back then, a sort of chuck it in and hope. No spinning reels, an old greenheart rod or in my case a tank aerial and centrepin reel from which you pulled off as much line as you thought you could cast and let it lie on the ground then cast your worm and lump of lead weight as far as you could. A really long cast would inevitably end up on the opposite bank and more than likely get caught in some bush. The line was not the plastic coated or nylon monofilament wonders of today but a level braided line, I'm not sure what the one I had was made of but the good ones were made of silk which could be had in Fine, Medium or Heavy. The cast was gut which had to be soaked in water the night before to make it pliable. I still have some 'Hooks to Undrawn Gut' the Lucky Strike brand by S. Allcock & Co., Ltd. Redditch. It wasn't until a few years later that nylon became cheap enough and trusted by anglers. Again I have a wooden spool of Allcocks Swissfil Grilon Monofilament, 50 yds. of 9 lb. breaking strain.