Rannoch
- Details
- Published on Tuesday, 02 October 2007 11:30
- Written by Simon Howells
I met my mate Martin at Euston on the Wednesday evening for the 9.20 PM sleeper to Rannoch. This was to be my first wild fishing trip to Scotland and Martin’s first time fishing. Things didn’t start well – I was incredibly overloaded on the way up and had so much stuff I’d needed to take a cab to the station.
But once we’d met up, the load became a lot more manageable – I off-loaded the spare fishing gear and waders onto my kit-less mate and the extra roll-mat and sleeping bag I’d needed to bring because he couldn’t locate his own.
The journey up was uneventful, save for one small moment of panic – the were no staff for the Fort William buffet car. We were, however, still attached to the Inverness section of the train and that buffet car was staffed. We’d be able to purchase the essential drams and beers until the train split at 2 AM. Staff on the sleeper were, as always, incredibly helpful, allowing us to stash rucksacks in a spare attendant’s compartment as there wasn’t room to swing a cat in ours.
Thursday, August 9th
We awoke to breathtaking scenery; mountains, heather and most important of all, lochs, rivers and burns that all looked like they’d hold trout. I couldn’t wait to get going!
Research prior to the trip had revealed there was a bus from Rannoch station to Kinnloch Rannoch and that it was timed to meet the train. Best of all, it would let you off wherever you wished along the route. But we messed about at the station checking train and café opening times and the bus left without us. We had to trudge the mile down to Allt Eigheach to the campsite helpfully suggested by members of the Wild Fishing Forum - only to find some New Age Traveller style van pitched up in the roadside parking bay. So we walked on a couple of hundred yards up the burn to a decent spot, pitched camp and brewed up whilst I explained some of the intricacies of tackle to Martin before we headed off for Lochan a' Chlaidheimh (Loch of the Sword). I gave some thought to the more direct route up Allt Eigheach and cutting across to join the railway line, but decided that we’d be better off going along the road to the station and picking up some rolls from the tea room.
We arrived at the lochan at about two with conditions looking promising – a warm day with sunshine but plenty of intermittent cloud and a light breeze from the South. And trout were clearly moving. We decided to start fishing along the Southern shore, despite previous advice that the Northern shore provides better wading. As a beginner, I thought Martin would benefit from the wind at his back when casting and well, basically, we couldn’t wait to get going.
What a cracker of a little lochan this is. Martin had a pull with his first inept attempt at a roll cast and then hooked and lost a fish whilst I was trying to develop his technique. Fish were rising virtually at our feet the whole time. Anyway, Martin was managing to get a reasonable line out within twenty minutes (either that or I was thinking “Sod it, that will do – let me at some of these fish!") so I moved down the shore fifty yards. First cast saw a vicious take from a fish about a third of a pound, quickly landed and returned. Some ten minutes later, Martin had his first fish, roughly the same size. It’s fair to say that that was him well and truly hooked – though the day was only set to get better.
I ended up losing count of the fish I landed, managing at least three double hook-ups and possibly one triple, with the third fish coming off as I landed the first two. All in the third of a pound and under class, but game fighters and pretty as you like. I thought I’d coughed up enough for a box of Allan Liddle’s flies that I’d won in a recent auction in support of the previously mentioned Wild Fishing Forum, so I’d best use them. I tied his heather fly hopper on the top dropper, his bibio emerger in the middle and a bog standard GRHE on the point. It’s fair to say Allan’s flies were the killers, but I suspect these trout were so keen that pretty much anything would have worked. And I didn’t bother changing flies the rest of the day – it seemed fairly pointless when I was landing a fish every second or third cast.
Martin ended up with four, two to a gold head GRHE and two to a Klink that I tied on for him after he pursuaded me that he should learn about dry fly fishing too. A great day for someone who’d never fished before and he’d have done better had we got there earlier and had we not ended up being driven off by the midges come eight o’clock. Even then, I more or less had to drag him away.
We passed the Rannoch Country House Hotel on the walk back and decided to book for dinner on the Sunday night. This turned out to be somewhat fortuitous; more of which, as they say, anon.
Friday August 10th
We were up relatively early, aided by the fact we’d only managed to bring one bottle of malt and a half bottle of brandy with us, for the Broon's bus down to Kinnloch Rannoch. The plan for the day was to stock up with food and booze and to fish Loch Rannoch from the boat.
Boat hire, from the Activity Scotland building behind the Dunalistair Hotel is expensive at £55 a day – but the boats are good and well maintained. Unfortunately, conditions were far from ideal – bright sunshine and a flat calm until mid afternoon. We did see the odd rise to the olives and the few sedges that were coming off, but nothing seemed to work. We started with wets, switched to dries then back again but didn’t even get a pull. By the time that conditions improved in the late afternoon we were some way up the Loch and had to head back so as to get provisions sorted in time to catch the Broons bus back at 5.45 pm.
The only excitement during the day’s fishing was that I suddenly got reception for my mobile and a message from Davy, a Wild Fishing Forum member that we’d made tentative arrangement to meet, saying he was up at the bridge over the Allt Eigheach but could see no sign of us. We saw no sign of him, either, when we were dropped off by the bus, so headed back to the tent, pulled on waders and had a go at the fish in the burn. I intended to walk up half a mile or so and fish back down with spiders, showing Martin the down and across method.
I wasn’t prepared for the fact that there are some really nice deep pools along the Allt Eigheach. These looked very trouty and also slow moving enough for me to cope with the real difficulty I have with upstream dry fishing – retrieving fast enough into the hand so there aren’t huge loops of line spilling downstream to knacker my next cast. There were a few fish rising, so on went the Klink. Unfortunately, I was unprepared in other ways, too.
In my experience, there’s always something vital that you forget when you go on holiday – in this case it was the Skin So Soft. As soon as we stopped moving, the midges were on us in absolute hordes. I’d got a midge net, but an operation when I was a kid means I breathe a fair bit through the mouth, with the result that the vision panel steams up in seconds. I had a go at the solution that had some effect the previous night – a Gauloises roll-up smoked furiously – but my lungs couldn’t take the fact I needed to chain smoke to get any result. Martin had already given up the fight half an hour previously and had headed off to get dinner on the go. I decided to follow.
When I arrived back at camp, Martin said that he’d seen a bloke setting up camp down by the bridge and I decided to head down to see if it was Davy – it was and he came back up to camp to join us for a few light ales and nips of whisky. The camp fire kept the midges off to a tolerable level and the rest of the evening was passed in various fishy tales, increasing drunkness and Martin’s incessant questioning about techniques and flies. Despite the day’s blank, he’d got the bug properly and Davy was a mine of information - and patience!
Saturday 11th August
We had a crack at Loch Eigheach with Davy giving Martin a bit of a casting lesson that helped him get a line out a bit further. Fish were moving sporadically and nobody was doing that great – by lunchtime Davy had had two, I’d had one (nothing over a third of a pound) and Martin only one pull. Davy decided to work his way up the Garbh Ghaoir and head to the tea room at the station in time for a coffee just before they shut. Martin and I followed more slowly.
I managed one more from the loch and another on a Partridge and Yellow – my best fish of the day at about the half-pound – from one of the riffles flowing into the first big pool as you head up the river. I showed Martin how to fish down and across at the next big pool and he managed a fish that had just outgrown the parr stage with his last cast. Final tally for the day – Davy seven, me three and Martin one.
Conditions had started off similarly to the previous two days but showers set in by late afternoon. Nothing too heavy, but enough to ensure the dead wood we collected on the way back to camp wouldn’t take when we tried to start a camp fire. Nobody wanted to retire early, but this looked inevitable unless we could keep the midges off. We’d earlier noticed a supply of split logs that were under cover in an unoccupied building and debated long and hard (well, for about ten seconds!) the ethics of “liberating” a few for our needs.
An hour later we had a roaring fire going, a huge meal of pasta and fresh veg. on its way and were beginning to make healthy inroads into the stash of beer we’d stored in a small pool in the burn. Finally retired, decidedly the worse for wear, in the early hours of the morning.
Sunday 12th August
Woken by rain and the roar of the Allt Eigheach at about seven, I soon had cause to regret the previous evening’s revelry. We’d cooked and had the camp fire on exposed bedrock right next to the stream and had been too legless to bring everything back up to higher ground. Whilst I’d had the sense to bring the stove and fuel away from the embers of the fire, cooking utensils, pots and, worst of all the coffee pot had been left next to the burn. One look outside was enough to confirm that these – despite our intention to bring out everything we’d brought in – had found a new home at the bottom of Loch Eigheach. Oh, and the remaining half bottle of Jura malt, too.
Davy had work on the Monday, so bade his farewells and, unable to cook breakfast or to make a flask of coffee, Martin and I reviewed our plans for the day. We decided we’d get breakfast, coffee and sandwiches for lunch from the tearoom at the station before taking a boat out on Loch Laidon. Being Sunday, the place didn’t open until eleven and our fishing was further curtailed by the fact that we’d booked dinner at the Rannoch Hotel. The only time they had available was 6.45 PM. I’d been thinking about cancelling after we’d successfully stocked up at Kinnloch Rannoch, but this now wasn’t an option as we’d no way of cooking a meal and no drink.
Despite the relatively short time we had fishing, Sunday was enjoyable. The wind was reasonably strong but without a drogue, drifting the margins of the loch was quite difficult as we frequently found ourselves running aground on rocks just below the surface. In the end I decided to fish the first couple of pools of the Garbh Ghaoir as it leaves the loch and all the day’s fish came from here. In retrospect, I’d maybe underestimated the difficulty of trying to teach someone to fish whilst simultaneously trying to teach them how to manage a drifting boat. Even in the relative shelter of the river it needed a bit of work on the oars to prevent us hitting the bank and Martin’s inexperience (and maybe my poor teaching skills!) showed. We ended up with one of us fishing the first two pools whilst the other managed the boat – we’d then motor back up and swap roles.
The final tally for the day – four for me with a half-pounder being the best fish and one for Martin which wasn’t too bad given the late start and early finish. Allan Liddle’s Wee Daddy Hopper fished on the bob proved to be the “killer” fly.
Monday 13th August
I’d set the alarm for seven but was woken an hour before that by rain drumming on the tent. It had clearly been lagging down for some time and was set to continue. A quick look at the burn showed it was already up to the level of the previous morning and I reckoned there was a real possibility of it coming over the bank where we were camped – there were signs of this having happened before and it had rained much heavier than the previous night. More to the point, most of that rain was yet to enter the burn.
I got Martin woken up and struck camp. Most of our kit hadn’t had an opportunity to dry out and then got even wetter whilst we packed up. We debated briefly whether to go through with the original plan, which was to spend the day fishing Loch Eigheach and get the sleepr home or whether to head home early. The wind had moved round to the North West, becoming much colder and the weather had clearly set in for the day at least. We were cold and wet, we couldn’t cook breakfast or make coffee and our tickets were valid for any train back to London. No contest – we were off. But we’ll definitely be back!
Simon Howells is an long time exiled Welshman living and working in London. He returned to fly fishing four years ago after what he describes as a twenty-five year "hiatus". He divides his leisure time between fly fishing, mountain walking and divising schemes that might pursuade his girlfriend and employer to allow him more time fly fishing and mountain walking.