QuoteOpen your mind, but be warned, fishing in Scotland will never be the same again.
Fred keeps constantly harping on about how bad the fishing is compared to his "adopted" country New Zealand.
Yes we know that the fishing there can be good there but it is can every bit as good Stateside, Canada Argentina & Chile etc
I take the opposite view Scottish fishing can be as good & on occasions even better than abroad. I would put up The Clyde,Tweed & Don as every bit as good on their day as any other world river. What I do not see with "abroad" fishing is the angling pressure. In all of Fred's pictures I have yet to see another angler, conversely look at any "reasonable" Scottish river & you see other anglers up & downstream. It is difficult on our rivers a lot of the better fish have been chapped but that does not mean they are inherently bad. Yes it is hard going but that makes some of us all the better anglers for it.
We as a small country have 100s of miles of clean rivers & loch & just about everyone holds Trout. Likewise lochs yes many are Bandy waters but little gems lurk there among the bandy lochs. Salmon & Sea Trout waters can be stuffed with fish & yes it is difficult to get on them due to the politics of ownership that other countries do not have. About time it changed but unlikely in my lifetime. No I do not see Scotland as an angling paradise but I do see it as "good fishing" for those that care to look for it.
Tight Lines
Yes :lol:
yes! :8) that's what i'm telling everyone anyway....
Quote from: corsican dave on March 27, 2015, 11:08:15 AM
yes! :8) that's what i'm telling everyone anyway....
Especially the rivers and lochs I fish. They are total mince. Don't go near them. :lol:
For me being camped at a lonely hillloch in the west, with a couple of fresh trout frying up at sunset is not to be beaten. For whatever reasons that's where I feel content. Just connects and feels great.
I've traveled to dozens of countries and fished and dived most of them but I'm never in a better frame of mind than when I can lose myself for a while in my native hills.
Quote from: Highlander on March 27, 2015, 10:45:35 AM
Fred keeps constantly harping on about how bad the fishing is compared to his "adopted" country New Zealand.
When we were on our last trip in NZ we met a guy from Orkney in the pub on our 2nd last night, he picked up on our Scottish accents at the bar. He was blown away with the country and told us he regretted not discovering the country 30 years ago when he was young and employable. I'm afraid he didn't have much positive to say about Orkney (including the lochs), which I thought was a shame, but it must be a pretty dismal place to live for most of the year. Even Stan left. :lol:
Well I'm just back in from a few hours on the local river lobbing heavy nymphs. Freezing cold, howling downstream gale, hooked and lost one fish. I felt like a gaucho wielding a bolas. :D
Scotland eh? Absolutely bloody awful it was, wish I hadn't bothered now. :lol:
Quote from: admin on March 27, 2015, 03:02:20 PM
I felt like a gaucho wielding a bolas. :D
you should try a #2 zoo cougar an a 10wt :wink: i'll let you know what the aliens think about it in an hour or so :8)
I usually just stick with a good old, fail me never Kate McLaren Dave. It's the universal Scottish fly. Ask Alan. :lol:
it's true! fishing in Scotland is as bad as Fred portrays :lol:
For the record I have never said fishing in Scotland is bad - that's just Highlander mischief making.
What I have said is it's mediocre by international standards and sorry if that upsets anyone, but it is! :D
It was not always so. As a nation we have taken some of the best salmon fishing in the world and certainly the best sea trout fishing and one way or another we have presided over its trashing. We have even screwed up the sea fishing.
Pike fishing seems to be the new growth sport. I blame global warming. :lol:
Quote from: admin on March 27, 2015, 06:37:19 PM
For the record I have never said fishing in Scotland is bad - that's just Highlander mischief making.
What I have said is it's mediocre by international standards and sorry if that upsets anyone, but it is! :D
It was not always so. As a nation we have taken some of the best salmon fishing in the world and certainly the best sea trout fishing and one way or another we have presided over its trashing. We have even screwed up the sea fishing.
Pike fishing seems to be the new growth sport. I blame global warming. :lol:
Only because Alan has been filling bandie lochs with pike so he told me any ways :lol:
Quote from: Alan on March 27, 2015, 09:17:34 PM
If wild fish forums from every continent joined up to compare i feel confident we could hold our own
Well of course you
could just sit in front of your keyboard and read about it on forums, but then you could also go and find out for yourself if it's true or not.
If you don't go you can never really know. :8)
Thats true tho most people cant take a month off work, ditch the family and find 3 and a half grand down the back of the sofa.
I suspect its something people can only afford to do where retired or very lucky.
Yeah, for sure not everyone can do it, I would not have managed it when I was younger either and especially when I was in permanent wage slavery. Time is a big problem for most people. Money is also an issue of course, but my last trip was done for the price of 20 fags a day for a year.
One of my first posts on this forum (always worth a cast) sums it up for me. Beautiful 3lb trout from a puddle. You just never know what lies in the peat stained water. Upon travelling to NZ or other destinations , you go with a certain level of expectation of what's in store.
Quote from: Alan on March 27, 2015, 09:47:21 PM
I'm sure its great, but i have other things i'd do if i were to jump on a plane, i have more family in Tasmania than here now and a mate in New Zealand, but if i was going to go to the trouble i'm afraid i'd be painting in Venice.
I can understand that. They say travel broadens the mind and it does. I loved all the cultural stuff in Europe, the ancient Greek and roman artifacts in the Med and Aegean, the long treks through the Himalayas and such stuff. I could not have imagined what these places were really like. Without going it would have been impossible. The fishing is the same and it's not just about catching big fish. Time and work restrictions are major problems for most people though.
I will be abroad this year and its something I really enjoy. For fishing wise I'm most looking forward to camp/fishing special places in Scotland that I go to tho.
Its where I feel part of the land. Can be a grouchy bugger but I light up cresting a ridge and seeing a hill loch or a good camp with views which for me are just the best.
Yes there are bigger mountains, more remote camps at the end of a plane , they're great but I don't feel better there than places under a hundred miles from my door.
It's hard to really compare Scotland with top destinations like NZ or other places with different climates. I've always wanted to try that area of Argentina (?) where Paul Young chases big trout with huge bushy dries in what looks like ditches. I would love to fish in NZ, always have done, but my personal circumstances prevent this. I still harbour hopes that I might get over in the next five to ten years or so, however I wonder if I'll be fit enough by then.
If we compare Scotland with European fishing destinations it still lags behind some places but I would not say it was mediocre. All in all with costs, choice and species I think it ranks not too badly
I think our view of fishing abroad can be skewed a fair bit by glossy magazine adds, glossy youtube etc and I reckon people abroad probably view our rivers and lochs favourably for similar reasons. It's not hard to make somewhere look desirable, some beautiful scenery, some slo-mo and a delighted fisherman holding a fat trout and the response of most fishers is ' id love to go there'
Scotland isn't the best in the world but we have some good fishing and some great fishing and loads of ok fishing and in terms of other countries we're probably pretty good. We've certainly got plenty to explore.
The most interesting point I've seen in this thread is the one about fishing pressure, how would the don or upper Annan compare to the NZ rivers without the daily pressure they face?
I was in Iceland last year (unfortunately not fishing) and was at thingevallir national park, amazing lake, big trout and char in large numbers and costs next to nothing to fish. How many fishers did I see? Zero, not one. Somewhere like that here would be fished to bare bones here and called mediocre
Quote from: Lochan_load on March 27, 2015, 11:06:00 PM
Somewhere like that here would be fished to bare bones here and called mediocre
Possibly, it would certainly be hammered for sure unless access was controlled and that would probably have to be done by high pricing. Sadly good, free and well known is not a combination that seems to work in Scotland.
All you have to do is not put a road , two hour walk Sorted !
Quote from: admin on March 27, 2015, 11:46:13 PM
Possibly, it would certainly be hammered for sure unless access was controlled and that would probably have to be done by high pricing. Sadly good, free and well known is not a combination that seems to work in Scotland.
I know what you mean there fred any fishing like that made public will be fucked in jig time.
But ive fished in Canada it was good I was hooked on Corrib for years and had fantastic fishing then I found a loch half a hr from home that puts them all in the shade. :wink: :wink: :D
Quote from: admin on March 27, 2015, 06:37:19 PM
Pike fishing seems to be the new growth sport. I blame global warming. :lol:
nah, pike fishing is just
SO last month, Fred.... i'm going fish'n'teering now :lol:
Quote from: corsican dave on March 28, 2015, 12:36:54 AM
.... i'm going fish'n'teering now :lol:
In that case you'll need one of these ................. :D
http://www.wildfisher.co.uk/smf/index.php?topic=24343.msg266578#msg266578 (http://www.wildfisher.co.uk/smf/index.php?topic=24343.msg266578#msg266578)