Wild Fishing With Neil Young
- Details
- Published on Wednesday, 06 August 2008 13:26
- Written by David McGovern
Let me get one thing straight before we begin. I am not recommending that you do it. There are people out there who will point out how dangerous it is. The kind of people who disapprove of anything even slightly dangerous, who no doubt think hang gliders deserve everything a dodgy thermal can throw at them or who ‘tut’ when someone drives too fast, or buys a motorbike.
People who think hillwalking alone is ‘asking for trouble’ and who probably form part of the vocal minority, who think we should all take out rescue insurance cover before taking to the hills in the first place. It was just something I had wanted to do for a while. I went up the hills, fishing. With my iPod.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Neil Young of late. ‘After The Gold Rush’ had long been a favourite but Chrome Dreams II blew me away. ‘No Hidden Path’ got me underway from the car park through the deciduous woods and beyond the tree line. Study of OS maps had thrown up a few possibilities. OS Explorer 386 is one of my favourite maps but there is an awful lot of private water on there. There are, however, a few spots of water in relatively inaccessible places which are worth exploring so, armed with my 5 weight Hardy Classic, a reel, spare spool of gut and a very wee flee box I set off in pursuit of wild trout. I take a very wee fly box for hill trout these days because I only ever seem to go for one of two tactics. If it’s a flat calm then I fish a tiny (down to size 30) machair spider on the point and something a wee bit bigger on the bob. Usually another spider. If, as is much more likely at 485 metres above sea level, it’s blowing a hoolie then I fish a straggle fritz claret dabbler. Or two. Or three. Fished fast, it’s a great heather fly imitation.
First objective of the day was to climb a mountain, then descend to a wee loch on its flank, then descend further to a wee bit of water that, according to the map, had what looked suspiciously like a ruined boathouse on it. I knew from previous visits that the wee dub didn’t even have a path to it anymore, was fairly hard to reach across very rough ground and that the estate didn’t fish it (I phoned to check). I chose ‘Neil Young, Live at the Filmore East’ on the iPod for the push up the hill. It’s a bit weird listening to music up in the hills. Would it add to the experience or spoil it? You do get some strange looks from fellow hill-users. Maybe I was singing along - or just shouting my ‘hello!’ too loud. It certainly made for a jaunty pace. I was dancing my way up the mountain. Some people didn’t look too impressed, like I had broken some great hill taboo. Maybe they feared that I would miss someone shouting ‘landslide!’ or a cry for help. Maybe I shouldn’t be listening to music on the hill. I’m not sure I really agree with it but it was very enjoyable. I made sure the volume was low enough that I could hear human voices and that no one else could hear the music. Putting one foot in front of the other while Neil batters out a rambling, distorted guitar solo is an almost zen-like experience and I reached the summit in no time to the closing bars of ‘Only Love can Break Your Heart’. No Neil, the view to the Atholl Hills and Glen Garry damned nearly broke mine. I descended to ‘Don’t Let it Bring You Down’ and tackled up for the weedy lochan on the mountain’s flank. I had watched fish rising in this loch many years before but wasn’t sure it was fishable. It is, but only when the wind blows from the southeast as it was this day. It’s a Victorian reservoir and a SE wind allows you to fish from the dam wall, all other sides of the water are overgrown with rushes and weed in shallow water which I’m sure protects the loch from fishing attention. If conditions are favourable, the fish are there and I soon had a brace of half pounders which fairly walloped the claret dabbler.
For the scramble down to the next lochan I put away the ipod as I had to have my wits about me as the ground is rough and rocky. The logical way to get to the lochan is to follow the burn from the previous lochan. It certainly looks sensible enough until the gradient increases and a series of micro-gorges is encountered. As there is no path your route needs to be considered carefully. Sheep and deer tracks aren’t always the best indicator of where to plant size 9 walking boots and I nearly came a cropper on the steep sides of the burn when I dreamily followed a sheep track and lost my footing. I was taught years ago that if you find yourself about to fall, jump. It gives you some control over where you’re going so I did just that and landed on the only flattish rock I could see about four feet below. Eventually, the lochan came back into view, a little weedy on the NE shore and with lots of ducks feeding in the margins. The surface was flat calm except for the biggest rise of fish I had seen in years. I skirted the southern shore to come around by the ruined boathouse (which was just an old low shed with the roof more or less intact) and tackled up. I took two tiny trout to the machair spider before the weather came in from the SE, the rain was preceded by hefty gusts of wind and I just had time to get the claret dabbler on and take a better fish of 3/4lb before the it battered in. The shed offered the perfect shelter from the rainstorm and it was great to enjoy the spectacle of fierce weather against the mountain backdrop whilst staying warm and dry in my wee hut. The same pattern of weather played out for the rest of the afternoon with the best fish being taken when the pre-rain gusts of each weather front brought out the bigger fish looking for wind blown heather flies. Best fish was around the 1lb mark but I spotted several bigger fish doing what big fish do - carefully taking flies in the middle of the lochan beyond my casting reach. Definitely one for the float tube but hauling it in would be murder. Maybe filling it with helium and towing it up on a length of rope would help.
Back on the main path with Neil, ‘Everyone Knows This is Nowhere’ seemed appropriate enough but ‘Cowgirl in the Sand’ was so engrossing it took care of half of the journey down. Is it the greatest example of a Neil Young guitar solo? With a fine brace of trout hanging from my rucksack on a coil of heather stem I was as happy as, well, a cowgirl in the sand, I suppose. The two wee lochans now have a particular place in my affections. As Neil says,‘When You Dance You can Really Love’.
David McGovern was born in Broughty Ferry but his father maintains he was conceived in Angus which is way too much information for a father to tell his son. He has fished all over Scotland having started his fishing career on the humble Dighty Burn and the mighty River Beauly. A frequent visitor to the Outer Hebrides and the wilds of Assynt, he fills in time between wild fishing trips on his local waters at Monikie in Angus where he lives a stone’s throw from the water with his wife, Gillian and two laddies, Robbie and Jamie. He works as an IT business manager and still fishes the Dighty Burn.