"BACK TO BLIGHTY", published by Trout and Salmon

May 2005



Flying into Heathrow on a bleak, rain swept Monday morning, after a year travelling around the world with my family, I wondered how fishing back in ‘Blighty’ might seem after all the exotic adventures I’d enjoyed in the last twelve months. Fishing would have to take a back seat for the next few weeks as I started to put my career as an advertising photographer back on the road and get my family re-adjusted to the routine of life in the UK, but my nagging concern was that, as an angler, I might just have been irreparably spoilt.

After two weeks in a blizzard of bubble wrap and cardboard boxes, our home started to look vaguely recognizable. A major photographic campaign came my way, and everything seemed to be returning to normal. I was itching to go fishing but work and the general avalanche of chores that accompany returning home seemed endless. Fly-fishing friends rang up and dutifully listened as I gibbered on excitably about all my adventures and bemoaned the lack of really world-class fishing in the UK. One, Laurie Hickman, formerly camp manager on the magical Yokanga River in Northern Russia and a good mate, took issue with my downbeat assessment of British fishing: “What are you on about?” he demanded in his thick, black-country brogue, “the Tweed’s fished better than Russia this year!” As I listened to his description of how the wet British summer, and, perhaps more significantly, the buying off of the nets, had provided a vintage year for Scottish salmon fishing, I suddenly had to go fishing. “How do I get on the river?” I asked, knowing full well that, in the unlikely event that they’re free, a few days on a prime beat on the Tweed in early November will set you back about the same amount as a small townhouse. Laurie, as always, had the answer: “You know Richard Vainer, don’t you? Give him a call!”

To say that I knew Richard Vainer would be stretching a point – I’d met him in Murmansk airport a couple of times and we’d traded opinions on the comparative merits of the various big-fish rivers of the northern Kola. I’d seen him and his lovely girlfriend, Anna, at fishing bashes and shared the odd cab-fare home. His charming brother Martin had secretly bought a few of my photographs of fly-fishing on the Yokanga for Richard’s birthday – but I wouldn’t say that I knew him. Still, fishing is fishing, and so it was that later that evening I wrote a brazen e-mail to Richard asking if I might come and do some salmon fishing on his beat of the Tweed at Carham. Astonishingly, he said “yes”, even offering to put me up, and so it was that, the following week, I set out on the long drive north to fish the much-hallowed waters of the Tweed.

Arriving at Richard’s cottage, perched by the lovely little Whiteadder (Say ‘Wit-adder’ if you don’t want everyone to laugh at you), I was greeted by Anna and had barely finished dragging my rods through the door when Richard and a horde of his chums came barrelling back from the pub, after a fairly concerted session that seemed to have started some hours previously. The party continued long, long into the night, the Macallan flowing freely, and I’m ashamed to say that the next morning, when I should have been bounding out of bed like a kid on Christmas morning, I was instead in an advanced state of alcohol-induced dissolution. Despite the vicious hammering in my temples, I managed to make it down to the river, where Richard and I were greeted by our boatman, Lee. He wasn’t overly optimistic about our chances – Carham is a beat that responds best in low water and the last few days had seen a couple of heavy downpours that had swollen and coloured the stream. Still, the river was dropping, and there were undoubtedly plenty of fish in the river. Richard clambered into the boat with Lee, whilst I ambled groggily up to a famous Carham pool known as the Wiel, a big swirling dub that has produced some cracking fish over the years. I took a couple of casts and instantly knew that my shooting head – equivalent to a wetcel 2 in terms of sink rate – was skating way too high up in the water column on this big, churning pool.
I strode out of the river and started to attach a faster-sinking head, when my mobile phone started to ring. I scowled at myself for not turning the thing off and then realised that it was Richard calling me up. His voice was excited but intermittent – mainly due to the fact that he was trying to talk to me and play a large salmon at the same time. I stumbled off down the bank, snatched my camera from out of the car, and arrived just in time to see Lee heft a stunning 24lb fish onto the bank. Richard held his prize up for the camera and I jealously studied the fish’s beautiful, thickset shoulders and huge, spade-like tail. It was magnificent: despite being a cock, the fish’s silvery flanks betrayed only a little of the lilac and magenta hues that commonly tend to adorn late-running fish, and the little black crosses of St David tattooed across its back were pristine and well-defined. Graciously, Richard offered me his place in the boat, hoping that the fish’s mate might still be lying in the pool, and I didn’t need to be asked twice.

The rest of that day passed without incident. I fished badly. Very badly. Two-inch brass tubes, ultra-fast sinking lines and violent, temple-splitting hangovers don’t tend to go together, and this day was no exception. I apologised to Lee and resolved to go easy on the ‘sauce’ that night – opportunities to fish such water, so profoundly etched in salmon-fishing’s rich heritage, and at such a prime time of the year, are a rare privilege, and should be treated as such. That night, I stuck to a few glasses of Richard’s excellent red wine and, as a result, woke the next morning in a far more congenial state. Driving down to the river through the gentle rolling country that flanks the magnificent old river, the trees splashed with the fiery copper and gold of late autumn, I felt a rush of excitement and anticipation to rival anything I’ve experienced as I’ve hopped onto helicopters in New Zealand or skiffs in Cuba. As I followed Richard’s car over the bridge at Coldstream, down onto the English bank, I snatched a glance at the river, and saw that it had dropped and cleared quite perceptibly. Low, pewter-grey clouds were scudding across the sky, softening the sun, and I knew that today I would have no excuses – it was a perfect day to fish for salmon.

The day was special: after fishing a deep dub at the top of the beat without result, Lee rowed me out onto the “Flummies” pool, from the Scottish side. The water looked faultless: a lovely, long draw below a long, shallow bend, the river narrowed by a couple of jutting promontories (or “Flummies”) projecting from the bank. The fish would undoubtedly stop here before negotiating the thin, riffly water upstream. A fish showed just below us and I hurriedly lengthened the line and started to fish. The long double-handed Sage seemed to make more sense in my hands than it had done the previous day, and I soon settled into an easy rhythm, the shooting head starting to snake out over the wide pool with a nice even regularity as Lee gently worked the boat down the pool. Confidence is everything in salmon fishing, and I’d decided on a small, home-tied black and yellow ‘Temple-dog’ that has given me some huge salmon in Russia. Lee, unlike some of his older peers, is happy to forsake the classic Tweed patterns and employ some of the “new-wave” Scandinavian ‘upstarts’ – as we watched the fly fluttering seductively in the stream, it looked, to me at least, a whole lot more enticing than the simple hair wing tubes favoured by many on the famous old river.

I slowly fished through the long pool, and had drifted into an easy chat about rods or flies or some such, when I felt the tremulous electricity of a salmon come crackling down the line. The line drew away firmly, and in a magical instant, I lifted into the fierce, heavy resistance of my first Scottish salmon. At first, the fish put up a sullen, truculent scrap, shaking its head and staying deep. Then, suddenly, it exploded out of the glassy pool: ‘salar’, the leaper - a blurry silver rocket that was abruptly wide-awake and full of rage. Lee worked the boat tentatively out of the river, and I did my best to control the raging fury of this special, first fish, as it thrashed furiously around the pool.
The relentless pressure of the big double-hander slowly started to tell, and eventually the salmon’s elemental energy began to subside. Finally, I drew the creature – a lovely silver cock of around eleven pounds - cautiously over Lee’s outstretched net. We had barely finished celebrating, the delicious fire of the dram still smouldering on my tongue, when I was into another: by lunch, my tally was three, all lovely silver fish weighing either side of ten pounds, and as I sat in the hut, regaling Richard with the inevitable blow – by blow account, and watching the cloudscape racing over the Eildon Hills, I felt elated.

The afternoon brought me back down to earth – the salmon were still taking the fly, but only when I stripped it back after fishing out the cast. As a trout fisherman, I am used to responding to a take to the stripped fly by striking, and despite Lee’s increasingly exasperated rebukes, I managed to lose three fish on the trot as a result. Finally, I got a grip, and we finished the day with another lovely fish. We repaired to the hallowed halls of the Ednam House Hotel in Kelso, where, sipping a pint of 80 shilling and doing my best to bat off Richard’s playful jibes about my carelessness in losing three good fish, I sensed the palpable history of the place. I pictured all the generations of anglers that had sat here, flushed by a day on the river, cradling a dram and cherishing the moment when their fly had been arrested by a Tweed salmon. I hoped that perhaps one day my young boys might sit here as grown men, nursing their own whisky and marvelling at the power of their first Tweed salmon. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t – if Orri Vigfusson’s inspired crusade can be supplemented by a sensible catch and release policy, and we, as anglers, can wield our collective might to keep our rivers in good order, there’s every chance that the fabled Scottish streams can once again assume their rightful place as the original and best place to fly-fish for salmon.

Richard kicked me out of my reverie, asking if I was going to sit there like an ‘old fart’ all night, or whether I was going to buy him a pint. I grinned and affirmed that I would. After a year away, it was great to be back, sitting in this great old fly-fishing institution, enjoying a pint of warm beer, our singular native humour – and truly world class fishing.

Fishing:

Not everyone is lucky enough to bump into someone as generous and as hospitable as Richard Vainer at Murmansk airport, but the Tweed does offer excellent fishing for far less than you might think. James Leeming’s excellent website, www.fishtweed.com shows up to the minute availability, along with a detailed picture of current river and weather conditions, and catch records almost ‘as they happen’. The ‘Traquair’ water, for instance, offers some lovely upper Tweed fishing – with a very real chance of a few fish - for only £75 per rod per day on the prime weeks, and the Traquair Arms Hotel makes an excellent and affordable base to fish this pretty beat.
Another option is the Teviot, one of the Tweed’s major tributaries. There’s some great and prolific association beats that are extremely affordable, and the river offers a more intimate alternative to the wide waters of the Tweed.

If you do fish the Tweed, try and make time for a glass or two in the Ednam House Hotel in Kelso: as you study the huge salmon that adorn the walls, marvel at the great old photos of some of the Tweed’s behemoth’s from days gone by, and feel the smoky malt whisky work its mischief, you’ll be left in no doubt that you are at the profound heart of one of our greatest angling traditions.

Ednam House Hotel
Bridge St
Kelso
Scotland
TD5 7HT

Tel: (01573) 224168
Fax: (01573) 226319

Traquair:
C/o:
FishScotland
Stichill House
Kelso
Scotland TD5 7TB
Tel: 01573 470612
Fax: 01573 470259
Email: info@fishscotland.co.uk



Tackle:
Like the Ednam House, Tony Vipond’s “Tweedside Tackle” is a salmon-fishing institution. Packed to the roof with every conceivable item of salmon-fishing kit, it also the place to catch up on all the bankside gossip and to stock up on the latest ‘must-have’ patterns. Tony and his staff know the river intimately, and can advise you on exactly what you need for any given day.

Tweedside Tackle
36-38, Bridge St,
Kelso
TD5 7JD
Ph: 01573 225 306


Instruction:
Based near Kelso, Eoin Fairgrieve is one of the most graceful and talented spey casters that I have ever seen. He is also great company and an excellent tutor, and will have most people spey casting with reasonable competency in double quick time. Eoin knows the Tweed and Teviot intimately, having been a boatman on the river for a number of years. I would recommend him unreservedly.
Contact Details:
Eoin Fairgrieve
t: 01573 226700
m: 0771 5977060
e: eoin@speycast.co.uk




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