A Rich Day

thumbWhen picking up the boat key for Fionn Loch this summer, I was told by Peter Hendrich, secretary of the Assynt Angling Club, that since the publication of Andrew Greig’s book ‘Loch of the Green Corrie’ it has received a disproportionate amount of angling attention in the area, and given its size and fragile ecology this is not a good thing. I have been lucky to have fished it twice – before ‘the rush’ and can confirm its charms –

but I am also passionate about all of the lochs in this area so have been happy to head further afield  or indeed in different compass directions in order to sample the wonderful wild fishing on offer in this part of Scotland.

 

 Greig mentions other lochs in his book – and one of these, Loch Dubh Meallan Mhurchaidh plus the scattering of sister lochs in the area, is very much worthy of being the possible subject, as he postulates, of Norman MacCaig’s poem ‘Rich Day’.1
 

I was lucky to share such a Rich Day this September.

 

Spending my annual angling pilgrimage to Assynt and finding this had clashed with the sunniest week in the not-very-sunny summer, things looked tough for me and my long-standing angling companion on the big lochs which were, unusually, untroubled by wind. We spent the week instead taking to the higher lochs where we might find what wind there was and it was on such a day that we fished Loch Dubh Meallan Mhurchaidh as well as Loch na Faoileige.2

 



The sun was still bright – as my badly sunburnt forearms would testify to later – but we did at last find some wind, both to give our fishing  a chance and to keep away (but only just) the swarms of voracious midges that can bedevil this part of the world.

This is magnificent country and in a week that had seen us fishing in beautiful weather in the shadow of majestic mountains such as Quinag and Suilven this was yet another day in which the main pleasure was simply being alive and rejoicing in the priceless charms and the ‘..invisible treasures..’ mentioned in MacCaig’s poem. We fished the lochs having had a ten-mile walk in from the north in order to take in the charms of Loch a Ghlinnein, Loch Feith an Leonthaid and Loch na Faoileige. Sadly for us, the first two of these were simply unfishable due to lack of wind, their mirror-like surfaces nevertheless simply stunning as they reflected the bright blue Assynt sky and purple heather-clad hills.3

 

On reaching Loch na Faoileige and enjoying yet another fine brew courtesy of the Kelly kettle we rejoiced as its smoke stopped rising vertically and began to drift south-westwards. A north-east breeze, often not the most favoured by anglers but a breeze nevertheless, was gently increasing and it gave us hope that our luck was to change. Up to this point we had begun to feel that we had simply been giving our fishing tackle a long walk.

 

The wind was by no means strong  and the ensuing ripple was neither regular nor large – which would definitely be my favoured state of affairs when after wild browns with my usual wet flies – but it gave us the chance to fish. In response to the conditions, Sean and I both chose to fish dry flies as these would produce less surface commotion being fished static and we were confident that our daddies/large sedge patterns would bring good fish up through the clear water. 4

 

Our confidence was not miss-placed and we subsequently enjoyed a marvellous afternoon taking (and releasing) a wonderful array of feisty and beautifully-spotted fish all on the half pound mark or better with the daddy-longlegs proving the deadliest of our arsenal. We lost ourselves in time, absorbed in this timeless angling challenge. 5 Fished static as planned, the trout hit the flies like mini express-trains and fought in their usual aggressive manner believing themselves to be a pound or so bigger than they were.

 
 

Moving from Loch na Faoileige to Loch Dubh Meallan Mhurchaidh only the scenery changed. The response from the trout did not. Sean finished up with nineteen fish to my eighteen on a day we might not expected to catch any fish at all; but it wasn’t about numbers. These fish had been simply stunning and of a good average size, putting a bend in our 4/5 weight rods. The scenery and fishing had certainly given us an enriching day. As Norman MacCaig had penned in response to a similar day himself, we felt rich indeed.

 

 

 

Anthony Glasgow is a lifelong and passionate fisherman, in particular for wild brown trout. Retired from the Royal Engineers as a major in 2004, aged 38 having served in UK, Germany, Canada, Northern Ireland, Bosnia and the Gulf. Now working in Perthshire (where good hillwalking and fishing is but minutes away – coincidence?). Despite his diminutive build, was once considered a good rugby player, but now fishing takes priority whenever he has the time!