Scotland's secret sport

THERE are some secrets in angling that are genuine secrets. They manifest as rumours and half-truths passed between anglers and over time morph into legends and hearsay

Then there are the secrets that hide in plain sight yet are acted upon by seemingly few people. In my opinion (and that of several fishing friends), river trout fishing in Scotland is the latter type of secret. This may sound to some a controversial statement; however, it is my view that, were trout the only salmonid species in Scotland, many of the famous salmon rivers would be heralded as the finest places to fish for trout in the UK and potentially in Europe. As it is, trout in many Scottish rivers play second fiddle to their larger silver cousins, rarely spending much time in the spotlight.

For many years I have travelled up to Scotland to fish for trout in rivers that are often regarded as the domain of salmon. These have included the Spey, Tweed, Don and Deveron, plus other rivers that tend to have a more ‘balanced’ split in fishing effort between the different salmonid species. The destination that started it all was the Annan in Dumfries & Galloway, just north-west of Carlisle. The quality of the trout fishing in the river is well known and there is a significant amount of fishing effort dedicated to trout as well as salmon. Whether this is because the trout fishing is so good or the salmon fishing (by Scottish standards at least) is comparatively poor, I’m not sure. I suspect it’s probably a bit of both.

On my first trip to the river I comprehensively beat my personal best trout and had several fish that at the time would have been the wild trout of the season in previous years. It seemed that every pool we fished contained solid trout, and the average size of the fish we caught was not far under 2lb. Impressive fishing on a river where trout tickets can be purchased for just £10 a day.