BREAKING NEWS JUST IN FROM MICHAEL WILSON

Tuesday 7th May 2013 is an historic day for Loch Leven.  Around 6pm, Alan Campbell from Kirkcaldy arrived back in the harbour proudly displaying the largest brown trout ever caught on Loch Leven.  He hadn’t just broken the all-time Loch Leven record, he had smashed it!

The fabulous brown trout weighed in at an official 11 lbs 5 3/8 ozs. Confirmation can be seen below.

Weighed in at 11 lbs 5 3/8 ozs

Alan had actually landed the trout around noon and so it almost certainly would have weighed several ounces more if done then but 11 lbs 5 3/8 ozs will go down as the official weight.

Alan is a Loch Leven regular, fishing more or less every Tuesday, and so everyone here connected with Loch Leven Fisheries is delighted for him.  He sought to give credit to Willie & Michael Wilson for recommending he tried Hole ‘o’ Inch and that is exactly where he caught the fish, using a Black / Red Buzzer, again on their recommendation – I suppose the law of averages suggests they will get it right occasionally!  Luckily the fish went deep rather than making a break for it, when there could have been problems, and fought for 15 minutes or more before being landed.

Alan Campbell with his record-breaking brownie

Those with a knowledge of Loch Leven history will know that the previous record had stood for over 101 years in the form of the 9 lbs 13 ozs brown trout caught by Colonel Bob Scott on 8th September 1911.  More recently, and almost exactly 100 years to the day later (4th September 2011), Michael Mackenzie had gone close with a lovely specimen weighing 9 lbs 6 1/8 ozs but nobody had ever reached double figures until today.

Congratulations Alan – you are in the history books!

A few words to celebrate the revival of Loch Lindores, a North Fife stillwater institution which was a regular haunt for me in days gone by.

One of the first lochs in Scotland to stock the now prevalent rainbows, Lindores quickly became a firm favourite for trout devotees. With 90 acres of water, nestling in the Ochil Hills and easy striking distance for the central belt, it’s not difficult to see the attraction.

These halcyon years came to rather an abrupt end when an infestation took hold and, what with one thing or another, it’s been lying fallow and unfished for the last eight years.

Lindores Loch looking west

To the rescue came Steven Wade of nearby Woodmill Shootings. Not content with his assorted game bird plucking, stalking and agricultural contracting interests, this enterprising fellow has taken on managing the fishery and rejuvenating the loch.

Tests were carried out….the water quality’s good, the green light was flashing, so earlier this month it was stocked with 1,000 rainbows.

Fresh from a Dumfriesshire hatchery, these are the real deal: top grade, hard fighting, fully finned, sporting trout.

Weighing in at over 2Ibs, they’ll be dining royally on the water shrimps, hitting 3Ibs by July and rising steadily.

Many a great evening spent on Lindores in my youth, where at times the evening rise was fantastic.

Back in its dizzy days, Lindores would have been teeming with stocked fish, but Steven is clear in his intention that this is an experiment in sustainability. There’s no catch and release policy, quite the opposite. You’re encouraged to keep your catch as he actively wants to monitor the fish.  And the more support the fishery receives, the more he will scale up over the seasons.

The six boats have been re-conditioned, there’s a wood burner in the bothy and fishing is available by the day or the long summer’s evening.

It’s always good to see a pheonix rising from the ashes, so let’s hope that enough locals get behind Lindores to return it back to its former glory.

Steven Wade who has now taken over the running of the Loch

And you like to think that the monks of Lindores Abbey who used to catch their Friday fish dish on the loch will be beaming with approval too.

For all the chat and details on bookings, call  Lindores on 01337 810 428.

Until next time, 

Tight Lines,

Greig

P.S. For those of you who have not seen the latest episode of popular fishing show – Hooked UK, please find the link to watch.  In this show we are out chasing early season trout at Carron Valley near Stirling.

Listen up folks, the Morayshire grapevine’s rattling and the chat’s all about a new killer fly.

Valiantly casting aside my fair weather fishing principles in order to give you loyal readers first dibs, I donned the thermals and bombed up the A9 to find out more.

For the Cronart is a fly inspired, conceived and tested on the majestic River Findhorn.

And it’s the endearing story of two chaps, two Davids, whose paths fortuitously crossed.

David one climbing down to fish the Findhorn

David One is a local gent and Findhorn veteran.  David Two is an accomplished fisher who recently upped sticks from Lancashire to the Highlands.

Quickly bonding over their mutual passion, they pooled their resources: David One’s intimate, almost scientific, knowledge of this spectacular river carving its way through rocky gorges, and David Two’s fly tying mastery.

Fuelled by local malts, it took many an evening and several prototypes before they reached their Eureka moment.

And I don’t use the E word lightly either. Between them, they caught a whopping 64 Findhorn salmon on this remarkable fly last season.

The Cronart tied on bottle tubes

The original idea was based on the need to achieve depth quickly in the narrow, bottomless gorgy pools. With a very respectful nod to both the Willie Gun and Alastair, it’s tied on a heavy bottle depth to give it this rapid ‘sinkability’.

The tying is designed to give consistent body and shape to what is effectively a shrimp pattern. Furthermore, it’s dressed according to the month, sporting light summer attire and a heavier early season look.

Stunning as the Findhorn’s craggy landscape is, the novelty soon wears off after your fly has distintegrated having clattered off another solid rock face.  So the Cronart has been designed as the Land Rover equivalent: a robust fly that takes the rough with the smooth and ploughs on in all conditions; a real discovery, if you like.

Your intrepid correspondent, unaccustomed to wintry March conditions, was forgiven a blank few hours by his hosts. Too early, too low and too cold.

David two casting below

Should I ever be asked back in more temperate climes, there’ll be no excuses, I’m sure.

They say the female of the species is more deadly than the male, but when it comes to killer flies, I reckon the duo of Davids has got it nailed.

At the moment they’re tying for friends only, but ask them nicely at info@cronart.me and you might just get lucky.

Until next time…….

Will

P.S. Join Greig & Stan on Hooked UK for some opening day antics at Lake of Menteith

I like a man who uses pseudonyms. It suggests there’s more to him than meets the eye. Especially one who sparks off perhaps the bitterest dispute in fly fishing history.

George Edward Mackenzie Skues didn’t hold back, that’s for sure. When contributing to the sporting press he wrote under an eclectic array of names including: A Butt, Current Colonel, Simplex Munidishes, Spent Naturalist, W.A.G and Unspoiled Child. Marvellous.

GEM Skues, the second in our occasional series of legends, joins Hugh Falkus as one of the finest fly fishers and writers of the twentieth century.

Skues on his beloved Itchen

Born 1858 in Newfoundland, Skues was shipped over to his Aberdeen grandparents aged just three. It was whilst at Winchester College that his zeal for fishing came alive. With four and half miles double bank of the famed River Itchen, the Hampshire college has inspired many a fisherman (my octogenarian father-in-law included).

As the Oxford University Press chronicles: “Skues’s place as one of the greats in fly-fishing history centres on his discovery that trout in chalk streams feed largely on nymphs, even during hatches, and not on the adult, emerged flies. His dressings of artificial nymphs specifically to represent larvae were new and radical.”

He began exploring his theory on the Itchen, after noticing that trout weren’t taking the floating natural fly. These discoveries culminated in the publication of his first book, Minor Tactics of the Chalk Stream (1910).

The River Itchen at Abbots Worthy

This forward-thinking approach directly challenged the dry fly wisdom of Frederic Halford (pseudonym Detached Badger), the oracle of the day.

The Halfordian school claimed that upstream nymphing, although effective, was unethical and bad for the chalk streams, and in 1938 the ‘nymph-debate’ was staged at the Flyfishers’ Club of London. Skues valiantly fought his corner but with Halford’s dry fly doctrine reaching cultish levels, the club found against the new fangled nymphs.

The disillusioned Skues, at the age of eighty, published a final defence with his 1939 book Nymph Fishing for Chalk Stream Trout. Simultaneously, with his modernist thinking putting syndicate noses out of joint, he despondently switched his allegiances to the local River Nadder.

Dr Andrew Herd, the eminent British fly fishing historian, describes Skue’s impact on the sport: “He was, without any doubt, one of the greatest trout fishermen that ever lived. His achievement was the invention of fly fishing with the nymph, a discovery that put a full stop to half a century of stagnation in wet fly fishing for trout, and formed the bedrock for modern sunk fly fishing.”

The man himself, a forward thinker of his day.

Skues died aged 90 and his ashes were scattered on the banks of his beloved Itchen by his old friend William Mullins, the long-serving head keeper of the syndicate.

A modest and humorous man, he subsequently had the last laugh as his nymph techniques were widely adopted by trout fishers both sides of the Atlantic.

Skues even has his own Facebook appreciation page, click here to show your own appreciation.

With the Tay experiencing record spring catches, join Greig next time for some Tay talk.

And yes, before you ask,Will Holt is my real name.

Until next time….

Will

P.S. For this of you who have not seen our Hooked UK series, here is the link to the latest show from the River Helmsdale in Scotland where Greig discusses spring tactics and Ron Sutherland ties the Super Snaelda.