When Monsters Become Real
- Details
- Published on Sunday, 18 December 2011 08:44
- Written by Iain Johnston
When one fishes regularly with the same person, banter becomes an irresistible part of fishing, especially when one’s boat partner is having an admin nightmare. Suggesting that they take up golf or lawn green bowls when they lose a fish or make a mess of a cast is often enough to evoke a string of expletives or an attempt to throw you out of the boat. But with familiarity comes responsibility, especially when your boat partner or fishing buddy asks you to net a good fish for them.
My friend Neil has fished with me regularly for twenty years, and I have been aware of his fishing exploits for longer; his name appeared more frequently in the school salmon catch record than anyone else’s. Being at the same university allowed the banter levels to develop and, when we both moved south following our respective careers but continued to fish together, gained depth from years of sharing fishing trips and their associated incidents.
Each year we go fly-fishing in the north of Scotland for a week, usually in Assynt to explore the hill lochs for wild brownies, the bigger lochs for the chance of a boat-caught salmon or in the sea for sea trout, bass and pollack. We have had our fair share of successes, and just as many incidents where things have not gone quite so well. I have previously written about the occasion when, following a two-and-a-half hour hike to a hill loch, Neil caught nine excellent brown trout and I caught nothing. There was another time when we caught a similar number of trout from the boat, but all of his were less than half-a-pound, and all of mine were around the pound mark, but the occasion when I had to truly call upon his help came at the end of a day of terrible weather on our
most-recent trip to Assynt.
My favourite loch is Fionn, a long, large water with a population of Arctic Char, one of which I caught late one evening. It has a population of Ferox that feed upon the Char, but it is for the free-rising brownies that we make the trek to fish from its shores. On many occasions, fishing with my 10’ 4wt Grey’s Streamflex, I have had double and treble hook-ups while fishing with mini-muddlers in a good wave while wading from the shore. The resulting scraps put a decent bend in the rod and validate fishing with lighter tackle. Fionn is connected to Loch Veyatie, which is similar in size and shape and has similar fish populations, by a reasonably-sized burn but, despite the similarities, we had never fished it until this trip, when a short daytime visit resulted in some good fish and the resolve to return again.
On the day in question, we had tried to fish on Loch Assynt, as there was a good head of grilse in the water, but the weather was prohibitively inclement. Much as a good wave usually provides good fishing conditions, foolhardiness could result in, at best, a good soaking, so we headed for a series of hill lochs we had never fished before. The first resulted in the smallest average size of trout I’ve ever experienced, so we headed to pastures new, caught some reasonable trout, then headed back to the accommodation early to get dry, have some food and decide on a further course of action. I wanted to try spinning from the rocks for pollack, as we had caught some the previous evening, but Neil suggested we try Veyatie, as the Assynt Fishing Guide said it contained some good fish which tended to move into shallower water when it got dark or when conditions were stormy.
As we would be fishing during both of the prerequisites for big fish, I tackled-up with my Daiwa Lochmor Z 10’ #7 rod, floating line, 8lb Maxima Ultra Green leader and a 3” black goldhead lure that I had tied the previous year for just such an eventuality but had not got round to using. On the dropper I attached a size 8 Claret Bumble to create a bit of disturbance.
Neil started fishing in the area we had targeted on the previous visit, while I carried on for a further couple-of-hundred yards to a point that accessed deep water. I waded out from the bank a short distance to give me a little clearance from the steep bank behind, then cast short before lengthening the line slightly. The third cast was a long-distance effort during a lull in the wind which I feathered slightly to ensure decent turnover of the leader. Pausing for a couple of seconds to allow the flies to sink, I began to pull them back with medium-sized strips. On the third strip the line went solid before being ripped from my fingers. Seconds later the biggest brown trout I had ever seen erupted from the surface of the water, instantly sending my pulse racing and my blood pressure through the roof.
After a couple of minutes of being tethered to a very angry and large fish that clearly had no intention of giving up its aquatic home, I hollered loudly for Neil to at least witness the fact I had hooked such a monster before the inevitable happened and I would be left with a slack line and that feeling of hollow emptiness that usually occurs when a dream fish is hooked and then lost. Despite the blustery wind, Neil heard me shouting and decided that either I had hooked a big fish, or that I had fallen in. Knowing me as he does, he immediately concluded that I had fallen in so chose to amble over to dish out some sarcasm at my ineptitude. However, and thankfully, his eyes met with a tremendous bend in my rod, one which unusually was not the result of me hooking the bottom. Almost immediately the fish showed again, and Neil’s pulse joined mine in the near-two-hundred-club.
Now, as I intimated at the start of the story, the duties of a fishing buddy extend to netting good fish, the only problem being that neither of us had a net, so the task I proffered to Neil had added responsibility should we eventually be in a position to land the fish. But that moment was still some way away, especially when a daft half-pounder attached itself onto the dropper fly. This increased the burden of anxiety upon myself, as not only did I have to consider the possibility of the leader parting at the knot, I had to consider the certainty of a lifetime’s worth of ridicule at the hands of my fishing partner for losing what is almost certainly going to be my fish-of-a-lifetime.
Following 40 minutes of lengthy runs and head-shaking action, during which the poor half-pounder spent the majority of its time dangling in the air, the moment came when the fish tired and was within a few yards of the bank and Neil’s task of landing a double-figure brownie (and a half-pounder), without a net, in near-darkness, in a storm, with the certainty of a lifetime’s worth of abuse at losing my fish should he fail, came to the fore. I could not have asked for a safer pair of hands however, and even if the fish and I had parted company at this late stage, I would have known it just wasn’t to be. Thankfully everything went according to plan (we had a plan?) and soon we were shaking our already-shaking hands in congratulations at the capture of a magnificent 11lb Ferox that was in beautiful condition, and displayed the proportions of a much smaller fish without the kype and big head that is often associated with Ferox.
After the capture we both made a few lacklustre casts before deciding that a celebratory visit to the Inchnadamph Hotel was in order, and to tell the first of many (undoubtedly increasingly tall) tales of the capture of the Monster of Loch Veyatie.
Iain Johnston has been fascinated with fish and fishing since the age of 4. Service as an Army helicopter pilot and instructor for 16 years took him round the globe, always with a fishing rod readily to hand. Now living and working in the south of England, he makes the trip north of the border whenever he can, usually with a boat, a mountain bike and half-a-dozen fly rods in tow.