High And Dry

IT was the driest early summer for 57 years and, even before breakfast, the glare was so great on my house loch that the trout wouldn’t venture from their weed cover to gobble any catapulted pellets.

- David Profumo

Anglers heading for the Highlands in July were greeted with an apocalyptic landscape of ghastly ragwort and stream levels well below gauges. As deadly dog days go, these were Rhodesian ridgebacks.

Nonetheless, The Doctor and I were determined to make our precious expedition Out West. I crammed the car with dapping gear, trout rods and everything but my Hebridean hand-lines and advised my father-in-law that, although a solar topee might be in order, he should forget those tropical shorts, as I’d heard the cleggs (horse flies) were something terrible.

En route, we visited the lovely kirk at Tongue, where I hadn’t been since 1964, and we prayed for an Act of God (although I suspect the Presbyterian Doctor and I may worship slightly different deities).

The burn beside the lodge was silent and there was scarcely a river to be fished. The Laxford possesses some of my favourite pools in all Caledonia, but they’d suffered 52 days without rain and there was but one salmon in the record book for the entire season.

I eschewed my usual tweed breeks and it wasn’t worth wearing waders—my shiny new Korkers Hatchback boots from New York would have to await their first wetting. At least there was a little cloud cover