New ways with salmon

As we head into the new year, it is time to look at how we can try and come to terms with much reduced numbers of salmon in our rivers. 

What is the solution? A brilliant blog post by Ian Gordon on his Speyonline portal suggested we should choose our mmoments, and not hammer the fishing, ie keep fishing effort light, or rather spread out over the fishing. He suggested in the region of 2 rods per 3 miles of fishing.

It reminds me of when I turned up at Norway's River Gaula on more than one occasion to find that there had been no rain for weeks but at last some water was coming through, leaving us with days of rising water. Manfred Raguse, NFC founder, said we should think hard about when to fish and when not to fish. If the water was starting to rise, perhaps use that time to have a break. A coffee or a beer.

Why did I do all that overseas fishing? The adventure of it, really. It started I guess with always looking for a truly special bit of fishing where a) either one was in with the chance of more than Scotland's 'one salmon a week', or with a chance of perhaps a couple of fish for your week, but with the chance of much bigger fish - like 20lb plus. (Gaula.)

There it is, the adventure led then to working on Trout and Salmon magazine and then getting into the 'Farlows' fishing club with my pal Brian Fratel. From this came Russia, then directly New Brunswick, Canada (meeting fishing friend Chrisopher on the plane back from Murmansk.)

There then followed fishing on the Spey at Carron and Laggan, and on the Beauly.

All these stories are in my book How To Catch More Salmon (White Owl Books). 

Perhaps I'll write more about this in my article in the Summer 2022 issue of the Flyfisher's Journal. 

Watch this space!