Bagging A Brace On The Brora

Spey casting in a gale in the peat-stained waters of Sutherland’s fickle River Brora proves to be something of a challenge, until our correspondent deploys a Willie Gunn fly

Certain rivers are generous to me, but some, inexplicably, seem to turn their backs and hand out goodies to others instead. However much I like fishing them, for instance, the Stinchar and Findhorn are examples of the latter, yet Sutherland’s notoriously fickle Brora has always been bounteous. Last time I visited, I managed three salmon in as many days—an average I wouldn’t mind maintaining across a Scottish season. This August, I was invited back.

Since Victorian times, the Brora has had the reputation of being a good spring river and—possibly due to a stocking of fry from the Rhine—is home to some exceptionally large salmon (a poacher took one in the 1940s that would only just fit into the local butcher’s freezer, and that measured 6ft square).

These days, most of the sport is confined to the four-odd miles of variegated streamy water below Loch Brora, which include one of my favourite pool names, Madman’s, so-called because an early angler did not realise the crofter he encountered there was chattering in the Gaelic tongue.