Fly fishing for salmon on the Dionard - a classic tale

[Wildfisher]

A Highland Year – fly fishing for salmon on the Dionard

An extract from "A Highland Year"  by Seton Gordon on salmon fishing on the river Dionard in Sutherland in the 1930s. Charming stuff from a bygone age, well worth reading. Some interesting  points of relevance even today. Seems that genetic integrity of the salmon in the rivers was not a big issue, nor were the aristocracy above deliberately attempting to foul hook fish! Note also how the gillie had to carry all the fish home himself.

Not sure if this material is still copyright, but the source is acknowledged and it is a good add for the works of Seton Gordon – if you can find the books  they attract a hefty price these days! This has been scanned and OCR'd so please excuse any errors.


The great salmon rivers of Scotland which flow into the North Sea are at their best in spring or early summer, but on West High- land rivers July is the most productive month of the year. On the Dionard river, near the north-west seaboard of Sutherland, the best fishing month is July. I have had happy days fishing the Dionard with my friends Commander and Mrs. Fergusson. One midsummer day I recall when there had been a spate the evening before and the river was in grand order. For a month of fair weather you may fish the Dionard (you won't fish it at all in low water unless you are foolish) without a rise to reward you, for it is a river which is entirely dependent on rain. But if the rain comes at the right moment when fish are awaiting their opportunity to run up from the sea pools, grand sport is assured. Rain did come on this occasion, just at the right moment. There was a strong head of foaming amber-coloured water when I fished Heather Point that afternoon. I quickly landed a clean-run salmon of 7lbs. at the head of. the pool, and when about half way down, my fly a few minutes later was seized by a heavy fish. For half an hour I played him, and the longer I played him the more I was impressed by his size. I had strong gut and a stout rod, but do what I could I could not bring him to the shingle. After half an hour he was tiring and set off down stream; when he turned on his silvery side I saw that he was a very heavy fish, but shortly afterwards the fly came away and he remained resting, not on his side, but in a natural position in a 'stream' at the tail of the pool, near the bank and in per- haps two feet of water. I put on a monster fly, and tried to 'foul-hook* him with it. Time after time I scraped him with the fly, but the current was too swift for the hook to strike home. So played out was he that he took not the least notice of these attentions, which would have sent a fresh fish streaking like an arrow away to deep water. I then saw approaching Major A. Carmichael and his gillie John George MacKay, who had been fishing higher up the river. I walked over to them, told them what had happened, and asked them to come and see the fish, which had been lying in the same place for a good half hour. John George thought he might gaff the monster. Very cautiously he waded into the river, but as he poised himself for this critical action the salmon, sensing danger, swam slowly and sedately away into deep water.

In a letter to me in the autumn of the same year (1943) the Gualann keeper, George Ross, writes as follows:

'I saw the big fish in Heather Point several times during the season and she was twice hooked but broke the cast on each occasion. She was about 30 to 40 lbs. I saw her twice on the shallows above Heather Point during spawning. I am sure this is the fish Mr. Seton Gordon had a hold of in June.'

The fly with which I was endeavouring to 'foul-hook' the big fish was many sizes too big for fishing a river in summer temperature ('The lower the water temperature the bigger the fly' is a salmon-fishing maxim) but, to see what would happen, I went back to that part of the pool where I had hooked the great fish and made a cast. The fly had scarcely touched the water when a salmon almost as large as the fish I had lost sprang after it with a mighty splash. I was so greatly taken aback that I struck too soon, and so lost the opportunity of playing two exceptionally large fish on the same day in the same pool.

There seems to be little doubt that the salmon of the Dionard are considerably heavier than they were, or perhaps I should say there is a small proportion of much heavier fish than any caught in the river ten years ago. It has been suggested that the reason for this is to be found in the increase of weight in the salmon of a neighbouring river, the Lax- ford. Spawn brought from other rivers has produced a run of heavy Laxford salmon and I am told that in the streams in the neighbourhood heavy fish are now being seen.

'The weather cleared shortly after I had lost my big fish, and the next J. day was cloudy, with little wind. Despite the reservoir of its loch the Dionard quickly falls, and the river was already on the low side, but good sport was expected provided the sun did not break through the thin covering of cloud which overspread the sky. Major Carmichael and I fished the upper water and as we passed the confluence of a burn with the parent stream a sandpiper left her eggs not a foot from the path. Under an overhanging bank at Heather Point a dipper was brood- ing her second clutch of white eggs with the music of the river in her ears. Alister Carmichael with John George MacKay left me to try Heather Point, and went farther up the river. They thought (and I agreed with them) that Heather Point was a certainty that morning and should yield several salmon. I started to fish the wine-coloured stream with high hopes and continued to cast with care and expectancy to the tail of the pool without rising a salmon or even seeing one move. This was discouraging, but I tried three more flies down the pool before I gave it up as a bad job. I then left to meet the others at Dugall's Run about a mile farther up the river. I walked fast, so as to waste as little as possible of the precious fishing time, for the river was falling rapidly. When I came in sight of Dugall's Run I saw that Alister Carmichael was playing a salmon, and when I reached him found that he had landed one fish and lost another. Salmon were moving freely in this 'run' and in Dugall's Pool below it, and it was not long before I rose and hooked a large fish, which was soon landed and weighed 24 lbs. I rose and lost another not much smaller—the salmon jumped right out of the water at the fly, and on these occasions one is apt to strike too soon, before the fly is properly in the salmon's mouth.

Dugall's Pool, very deep and black and with little current flowing through it, did not look a likely place for a fish that day but I saw a salmon show near the tail of the pool, where Dugall's Burn flows into it. When I put my fly over it the fish took it at once and I landed it—a salmon of 8 Ibs. A little later Alister Carmichael played and landed a curious salmon. It had a large kelt-like head with the tooth-like projection from the lower jaw that is characteristic of the male kelt salmon. Yet at mid- summer a kelt is an unheard-of thing, and this fish had sea lice on it, showing that it had come straight from the salt water, where no kelt would be found at that season. When we examined the fish we found that it had received a severe injury, perhaps from an otter or seal the previous season, and this had apparently prevented the salmon from regaining condition in the sea, so that it had remained in its 'kelt state' during its stay in salt water.

We finished our fishing when still four miles from home, and I do not think that John George MacKay is likely to forget that day, for he carried, making light of the weight, 7 3 Ibs. of salmon back to the lodge, four miles distant and 500 feet above the river.

The next day was Sunday and no fishing is permissible in the High- lands on that day; public opinion would be gravely disquieted by it and besides it is illegal to fish on a Sunday for salmon in Scotland—but not in England. An anticyclone spreading over the Highlands brought then the finest of summer weather, and the Dionard shrank to a trickle, in which state it remained for weeks. Day after day the sky was cloud- less, and for sixteen hours and more the sun shone with scorching heat, drying the bogs and the crofters' peats, waiting to be set up to harden.

One evening after supper my friend and Dara the collie—she who has been with me for many a walk through the glen, over the moor, and across the hill—left the Gualann to watch the sun set from Farraval, the hill on whose shoulder or Gualann the lodge is situated and from which it takes its name. We reached the broad top just before half past eleven at night (by the very artificial Double Summer Time, which is looked upon with little favour in the Highlands of Scotland). Although the sky at the zenith was clear a haze lay near the horizon, veiling from sight the long and low island of Lewis. Slowly the sun moved north above that distant horizon then, as it touched the sea, seemed spherical no longer but shaped like a lamp-shade, rich and warm from the kindly light within it. The lamp-shade later changed to a mushroom, the glowing stalk quenched in the sea. As the sun very slowly sank beneath the ocean perhaps seventy miles from us a pool of deep red was spilled upon that distant sea. At eighteen minutes to twelve he was gone, to light that Celtic land of the spirit, Tir nan Og, and Foinne Bheinn then lost her purple glow and her cone-shaped summit became grey and cold. Like a jewel, Loch Dionard lay amethys- tine at the head of its glen. A golden plover rose and flew swiftly over Farraval. The sea breeze went to rest, its dying airs leaving scattered pathways upon the ocean's face.

It is said that God gave us Memory, that we might have roses in December: I like to remember this, and other sunsets, during the short days, the dark days of winter, and the dark days of life. That evening we did not see the eagles that often soar above Farraval, hunting the hares that live on the higher slopes of the hill.