Caithness Challenge
- Details
- Published on Tuesday, 02 October 2007 11:25
- Written by Paul Williams
Many think that when a man fishes, it is only a battle between angler and fish. Once a fish is hooked that is pretty much true, but first the angler must overcome nature; the conditions and environment in which he fishes. There is also another battle the angler may have to fight, and that battle is against his own body and mind. It is such a battle that I was forced to fight in Caithness this year.
Opening my eyes was a conscious struggle. I knew I wanted to, but it was almost as if I had temporarily forgotten how to do it. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t work out what. I couldn’t even remember exactly where I was. My eyes flickered open and realisation of my situation came flooding into my mind. I was lying face down in a supermarket car park in the centre of Wick town.
I hauled myself into a sitting position with some effort. Almost instantly I became saturated in sweat. Glancing around the almost empty car park, I thankfully ascertained that no one had spotted me. My body still felt strangely semi-detached from my brain, but I managed to pull myself upright and sit my self down on the driver’s door frame of the hire car in which I had arrived. I sat there puffing for breath for a few minutes before finally summoning up enough strength to drag myself fully into the car. Sitting there in stunned silence, head spinning, I wondered if anything like this had ever happened to John Gierach when he took a fishing trip.
The day had started with such promise. I’d crept out of my Fife home at about 3 O’clock in morning leaving wife and kids slumbering away. I’d only had an hour and a half of sleep, but with 15 years experience of working night shifts I didn’t see this as a problem. My plan was get up to Caithness as quickly as possible to maximise fishing time on the waters. Cruising up the A9 and then the A99 in just over four and a half hours without stopping, I entered Wick ahead of schedule. I would need to wait about an hour or so before the ever helpful Hugo Ross opened the doors of his tackle shop. It was here that I would purchase the tickets I needed for my planned 4 days of fishing on some of the best lochs in the country.
Having arrived early, I pulled into a supermarket car park, just around the corner from Hugo’s. With the morning sunlight of a beautiful June day streaming through the windows, I cocked the car seat back and closed my eyes to grab half an hour or so of a nap. Fifteen minutes later I woke suddenly, instantly regretting the packet of dark chocolate covered stem ginger biscuits I had scoffed during my dash to this place. Feeling I was about to vomit, I lurched out of the car, dropping onto one knee. That was the last thing I remembered before regaining consciousness from the blackout.
I never was actually sick, but I spent the next three hours struggling with the sensation. Eventually, the sunshine that had been so welcome earlier became troublesome to me as I cooked in the car. I pulled the car out of the car park and into the shade of some trees at an adjacent picnic area. As my body continued to normalise, I considered the ruins of my fishing plans. What was I to do; head home? I didn’t think I would make it, and anyway I still wanted to fish. I left the car and crashed out on a picnic bench. A cooling breeze from the North East prevented any further overheating, but it didn’t escape me that this was not a good direction to have the wind coming from fishing wise.
By eleven, although very weary, shattered in fact, I’d regained enough strength to move about a bit. I wandered through the park and up along side the River Wick. Returning to the car, I moved it back into the car park, then slowly and cautiously walked up to Hugo’s tackle shop, entering it at about midday. I didn’t know how I was going to fish, I still felt much weakened; everything taking three or four times the effort it normally would, but I was determined not to be defeated.
“How’s the fishing”, I asked Hugo, as he welcomed me from behind his counter.
“Picking along, picking along”, came the reply. It was the same answer I had got when I’d phoned the shop a week ago. I didn’t really know what picking along meant, but I suspected it was the standard answer of a wise man that caters for many anglers who walk through his shop doors each season. Some of those anglers probably come with false expectations of large suicidal wild trout, whose only thoughts are to defy all prevalent conditions in an effort to latch themselves on to improbable flies, badly presented before them. To me, picking along is the polite way of saying the fishing is what you make of it.
I wondered what Hugo made of the bedraggled sight before him. Perspiring steadily again, pallid of face, I was still dusty from my fall, with a fresh contusion above my left eye. Not wanting to talk about my sudden onset of weakness, I hurriedly bought a ticket to fish Stemster loch, also confirming my booking of a boat on Watten for the next day. A boat! In my condition? I hardly wanted to think about it.
Hugo pulled out an OS map and gave me instructions for reaching Stemster. He also pointed out a few areas to try. I headed off. Still not able to think about eating ever again, I forced myself around the shelves of the nearby supermarket, buying provisions before returning to the car.
Leaving Wick by way of the Watten road, I passed through the village that bears the lochs name, and a couple of miles later I was pulling into the caravan site where my accommodation was booked. Quickly paying the bill to the proprietor, who I found just finishing off cleaning the static caravan, I hurriedly unloaded my gear from the car.
There was still a deep urge in me to head off for the loch, but mind and body were making their complaints known. I lay down on the large cushioned seats in the living room area and I slept.
When I woke, three hours later, I can not say I felt exactly refreshed, But I did feel improved. I quickly made the decision. I was going to fish on this day, even if it………I was going to fish on this day. I ate an apple and some raisons. All I could face. At four O’clock or so I headed off towards my chosen loch. Driving back to Watten village, I turned off along the small winding road that made its way to across to the main transport artery of the A9. A few more miles motoring south past an unworldly wind farm, and I was turning onto another small road, but only for seconds before turning again, this time onto a track that followed the west shore of the loch that now lay revealed before me. A stones throw down this track; I pulled into the anglers parking area. Stopping the cars engine, I sat for a while looking across the sparkling waters to Stemster hill beyond. I could see two other anglers fishing off the bank below sprawling stone built farm buildings of some sort. On the grassy slopes around the buildings were scattered sheep grazing in the bright sunlight streaming from almost clear blue skies.
Away to both the south and north ends, the rocky shoreline rose up into heather clad slopes of a gentler nature than the steep sides of the hill. The rock and heather evident here, gave the loch a much more highland feel than other lochs I had seen in Caithness. I instantly liked this loch. Stemster is small and wild, rugged in parts. The hill that sits to its south east gives some shelter from winds that bear east in their description; always welcome on any water. In short, this water had character. Yes, I really liked the look of this place.
Having donned my chest waders, I made my way over the tussocks of the narrow strip of land between the parked car and the stony shoreline. Hugo Ross had recommended the rocky inlets and peninsulas of both the south and north shores. I headed south, taking my time in an effort to conserve energy. My chosen destination was one of the bigger peninsulas I could see on this indented part of loch shoreline. Splashing across the weedy, silt laden shallows of some of the finger like inlets, I soon arrived at my target and started to string a rod up.
Despite the shelter from the bulk of Stemster hill, the cooling wind from north of east was pushing small waves across the surface. As I started to attach a fresh leader, a fish rose only a dozen feet or so out from the shore. I froze, hardly daring to believe what I had just witnessed. The rise had not been a splashy hit and run affair; it had been a lazy just sub-surface head and tail of a big, wild brown trout. I conservatively estimated the broad brown back as belonging to a fish of at least four pounds. I had chosen this loch as the starting point of my trip because it reputedly held a good stock of trout averaging about three quarters of a pound. Call it a warm up session if you like. My plans for targeting bigger fish were centred on fishing the known big fish waters of Heilan and Sarclet later in the trip.
I tried to stay calm, concentrating on tying secure knots first time. With no noticeable hatch coming off the water, I opted for a couple of Half Hogs as a cast; black and red on the point, with an olive and red on the single dropper. As I tied them on, the two anglers whom I had spotted earlier approached me. Greetings exchanged, it turned out that one of them was a fellow www.wild-fishing-scotland.co.uk forum user. No surprise in that, but he also turned out to originally come from the same Welsh valley that I was born and bred in. It’s a small world.
The two anglers, father and son (if I remember correctly), had packed up for the day. In the time honoured tradition of fly anglers everywhere they passed on a report of their efforts. They had fished all day, with the best of their results coming from the rocky bays at the north end. Most successful fly had been a Diawl Bach. This was a snippet of information that was to serve me well at a later date on this loch. As they bade me farewell and moved off, I tightened the last saliva lubricated knot and snipped off the small tail of fluorocarbon. I was ready.
I had seen no further sign of rising fish since the big one had sent my adrenalin levels soaring. Well back from the waters edge, I gently flicked out the flies over the area where I had spotted the fish. I repeated the cast several times, then gradually lengthened my line searching further and further away. My flies remained unmolested, so I started to carefully wade out into the loch in the search for undisturbed water to cover.
It was at this point that the wind temporarily dropped to a gentle breeze for ten minutes or so. I suddenly became aware of insects hovering above my head. They were Mayfly: Fat, succulent, long tailed Mayfly; the sort of insect that small trout quickly grow big on in wild lochs. The wind regained its strength and the flies were gone.
It was not easy wading, but it was manageable. The loch bed was strewn with rocks; an ideal habitat for my wild quarry. Soon I was well out from the shore. It was probably not the wisest thing to do regarding my earlier circumstances, but who ever said that anglers are the wisest of people. Up to my waist in cold water, with the warm sun on my face; the only noise belonging to wild birds, the wind and the waves; this was a strong medicine. I was feeling stronger by the minute.
The five weight line snaked out, dropping gently, by my casting standards, down the side of a wind lane lying parallel with the shore. The take was immediate and typical of a wild loch brown: A sudden grab, followed by a frenzied, splashy fight. Bringing the protesting fish to hand, I slipped the black half hog out of the trout’s lip. It had half missed the fly, the hook taking a hold on the outside of its mouth. Submerging the fish again, the half pounder gave a final indignant thrash of its sharp profiled tail, and propelled itself out of my hand at speed back into the refuge I had so rudely, but briefly removed it from.
I fished on for another half an hour, then I decided on a move. Retracing my steps to the car, I carried on up the rutted track that ran along side the West shoreline, a few sheep scattered ahead of me. Where the track continued on leaving the loch side, I turned off onto a sheep path, passing the boats that sat in their small harbour at this North West corner of the water.
As at the south end of the loch, the uniform shoreline of the west bank changed as the water line turned eastwards; becoming ragged with small bays formed by grassy topped fingers of hard rock reaching out into the loch. If anything, this north end of the water was even rockier and more fish friendly looking than the southern area I had fished earlier. I was soon exploring these little bays with my flies, but as the sun lowered in the sky, so did the air temperature. It was still bright, but there was no sign of insect life, nor any sign of fish on the surface.
I changed my flies. I felt that something that would dig a bit deeper into the water than the surface disrupting Half Hogs would bear more promise. Green tailed Kate went onto the dropper with a nameless silver bodied fly six feet away on the point. The nameless one seemed to call out to me from the box where it sat in splendid solitude among the well known. A tail of GP tippet tied long, palmered black cock hackle bound to the silver tinsel by silver wire, and a head hackle of long Greenwell hen. I couldn’t remember why or when I’d tied it, but I thought it was close to something I’d seen in a Bob Wyatt article. Regardless of its origin, this now seemed to be its day of destiny.
Edging out into the water off one of the rocky points, I turned my back into the now mildly chilling wind and cast across the wide entrance of one of the bays. Fanning several casts out from this position, one of my quick and jerky retrieves was suddenly interrupted by a sudden and forceful pull that buckled the end of my rod over into a classic fish fighting hoop. There were no surface dancing displays from this fish, just heavy and fast dogged resistance that suggested a big fish. Momentarily my mind went back to the broad brown back that had tantalised me over on the other side of the loch, but just as quickly, I realised that something just did not feel quite right.
As the fish raced past me, I increased the pressure on it. Stopping it and making ground on it. Still the fight did not feel right; then as the fish became visible in the clear water, I realised that it was pointing the wrong way; obviously foul hooked. I bullied the fish to hand. It was a fine fish of about a pound, a beautifully spotted brown olive backed creation. I removed the unnamed fly from its flank, no harm seeming to have been done, and then I watched as the fish slipped out of my wet hand to swim strongly, but elegantly away.
I fished on for a while, but not a fin stirred. Nor did my flies further enchant the denizens of this wonderful little loch. It was time to leave. Two small trout may not seem a lot, but on this day they represented a huge victory to me. I had come to fish and I had done so, regardless of physical adversity or mental doubts, fears even.
Fatigue crowded in on me again as I drove back to the caravan, however a good night’s sleep lay ahead of me and beyond that Loch Watten awaited my attentions. Over the next three days, restored to full strength, if not confidence, I was to enjoy some of the best, though challenging, fishing of my life. That, however, is a story for another day.
Paul "Gander" Williams born and bred in South Wales, Paul took up flyfishing for trout in the mid 1990s, after moving to Scotland. Married with three young children, Paul manages to squeeze a bit of fishing into his leave periods from the North Sea platform on which he works.
Almost exclusively fishing loch and stillwater, Paul has migrated over the years from stocked Rainbow to Wild Brown fishing. With a love for fly-tying, he is particularly fond of using deer hair patterns.
Paul can be easily identified on the loch by his repeated fervoured fly changes, and his habit of consistently missing takes while watching the local wildlife instead of his flies.