The leviathan from a winter-long dream

Better known for its salmon and whisky, Aberdeenshire also offers superb brown trout fishing, and Julian Schmechel lands a monster

- Julian Schmechel

Situated in the north-east of Scotland, the Grampian region is renowned for its dramatic scenery and fine malts. But the quality of its wild brown trout fishing is perhaps something often overlooked.

Fed by high springs and snow melt, the rivers Deveron and Don in Aberdeenshire possess quality wild brown trout little matched in the UK today. With abundant insect life, and a genetic propensity to grow large, brownies in excess of 7lb are not uncommon here. Thickset and beautifully spotted, Salmo trutta on my local river Don are wonderful to behold and a quarry fit to quicken the pulse of any fly angler. These wild fish are preserved by a laudable policy of catch-and-release, for the quickest way to destroy any fishery is the indiscriminate killing of mature fish.

The stocked rainbow trout of lowland lakes are wonderful to fish for, but the wild brown trout of Deveron and Don are a very different prospect. Evolved over millennia to survive their native rivers, they are wary in the extreme. Make one poor cast and they won’t charge away like red deer, or make a demonstrative exit like a cock pheasant; they will simply vanish. Refreshingly, the cost of such quality fishing is often a fraction of that incurred by the visiting salmon angler.

Frigid days