My First Trout
- Details
- Published on Wednesday, 27 September 2006 14:38
- Written by Allan Hutton
It was a member of the Royal Family who first introduced me to angling, well sort of. It was while preparing for my Duke of Edinburgh bronze and silver awards among the hills above Lochgilphead that I developed a passion for angling.
After a hard day tramping the hills we would set up camp at a loch side location. Our instructors Mr. Henderson and Mr. Moffat always brought along their travel rods and boxes of flies, and once we settled into the camp they would then set about catching some pan sized trout for our supper.
On this one occasion I accompanied Mr. Moffat as I was keen to learn to fly fish. He patiently taught me how to cast, leaving me to my own devices when he thought I was competent enough.
After a fishless hour of casting, I made one last cast, placed the rod on the bank, and sat among the heather. I had no sooner sat down when there was an almighty splash and Mr. Moffat's fly rod was violently pulled out into the loch. Well, as you can imagine, I panicked and cried out to Mr. Moffat who was on the far bank with Mr. Henderson who appeared to be catching fish every second cast.
The two of them came running over to me to see what all the commotion was and, when I explained what had happened, we cast our eyes across the loch to see if there was any sign of the rod. To our surprise the rod tip was popping up every now and again and it was within casting distance, so Mr. H expertly cast out a line to see if he could hook the rod after half a dozen attempts he managed to latch onto the rod and he hurriedly pulled in his line. Once he got the rod to the bank I picked it up and, to my amazement, the fish was still on the end of the line. After a few runs, and a few heart stopping leaps, the fish finally succumbed, was brought to the net, and I had my first trout.
Allan Hutton lives in Airdrie with his wife Val and his teenage son, Allan. He has three great passions in life. Fly fishing, hillwalking and Airdrie United FC. He also enjoys fly tying and photography. Allan is a member of Airdrie and District Angling club and fishes Hillend Loch regularly through the week, but also loves to fish the wild, small lochans in the mountains of the Highlands at the weekends. Allan also contributes to the Airdrie United FC match day programme.