Salmon fishing - advice for rookies, beginners and novices, or anyone else interested
Tweed Tweed - the picture says it all Horncliffe 1 looking downstream We had an extraordinary week on the Bottom Tweed, the complete opposite of last year when we were spated off for 4 of the 6 days. The low water - quite the lowest the boatmen had ever seen - was what we wanted to hold fish in our beats at Horncliffe and Pedwell. The downside was that the Costa Del Norham was enjoying more hours…
Maybe Airlines Maybe we fly, maybe we don't Maybe we crash, maybe we don't Maybe we die, maybe we don't Sarajevo 1995 This faithful hat has been with me for every step of my salmon-fishing journey, through rain, shine, snow and ice. Finally, faded under the impacts of wear, tear and rot, it has fallen apart and now must retire. I'm sad to lose my constant companion. Whether it was a lucky hat I'll…
.......it couldn't get worse, it did. Murphy the weather man was alive, well and kicking brutally throughout 2025. I finished the last post, Stark Contrasts, on an optimistic note following disappointments on the Orkla and Tweed. After all, who wouldn't be optimistic with the prospect of a week's fishing on the lovely Helmsdale in early September? And surely the great Yorkshire drought would have…
The title of this post has a simple explanation. At home in Yorkshire it stopped raining in February and less than an inch has fallen since, against a normal average of 9 inches. The garden is a desert and I'm struggling to keep alive the collection of specimen plants and Acers established lovingly over the past 28 years. Virtually every plant and tree in the garden is stressed apart from the two…
It's been a full 6 months since I last wrote, primarily because I didn't have anything useful to say, and when the time came to think about the annual MCX Christmas Stocking article, I was completely lacking in motivation, and far more concerned with grandparent duties. Then in the New Year I was fully occupied for 6 weeks with a trip to New Zealand, where our elder son is currently working on a 2…
Lower Inver morning view upstream from the Scrambles Over the years I have been privileged to fish in many beautiful places, but nowhere else moved me as much as these two small Highland rivers. As I walked up the Lower Inver on the Monday morning of our week, I found myself humming the song "Dancing Cheek to Cheek" from the 1930s musical Top Hat, produced and directed to showcase the magical…
In my last post 'Rain, Beautiful Rain' I was buoyed by optimism, with great hopes for the season to come. As always I added a caveat of 'Murphy's Laws permitting'. Subsequent events have underlined the prescience of that warning, because it's been an incredibly dull summer in which nothing much has gone right. Even enjoying the garden has been a challenge amidst the cold, wind and rain, and the…
I haven’t written anything since Christmas because, as is so often the case in winter, I didn’t have anything useful to say. Now it’s April: the salmon season is open in Yorkshire; the rivers are full of water; and the first salmon have been caught on the Ure, the earliest catches in a decade. That’s quite enough to perk me up to write, even if the content could be a mite thin. It's been an…
Salmon Behaviour Taking a fly https://mcxfisher.blogspot.com/2013/01/revelation.html Feeding impulses Fast Food & Broad Beans https://mcxfisher.blogspot.com/2013/02/fast-food-broad-beans.html The Dynamics of the Take Crash! Bang! Pluck https://mcxfisher.blogspot.com/2013/10/crash-bang-pluck-dynamics-of-take.html Hen fish taking times Good Morning Ladies…
The dullness of this season's salmon fishing is clearly evidenced by how few posts I've written since the last Christmas Stocking. Indeed, my autumn on the Ure was so quiet that it didn't merit a separate post: 5 days for two fish and three unusual complete blanks. Just as I had experienced on the Tay, there just weren't many, if any, fish around. The decade of decline since 2014 has been marked…
Stanley Fishings Panorama from Summerhill Pitlochrie centre and left, Benchil downstream to the right The Tay is unlike the other Scottish salmon rivers I've described on this blog: It's huge: the average width in the panorama above is around 140 metres (a long roe stalking shot or a full 7-iron). In contrast, Commonty, the biggest pool on the Spey, is only 70-80 metres. Salmon can run into and…
First exposure to fishing Grandson on the Rye August 2023 I haven't written anything in a long time, simply because I had nothing original to say. Back in April I starting drafting a post titled "Delightfully Average", describing the wonderfully average spring we were experiencing in Yorkshire, a marked contrast to the predominantly very dry and cool seasons that have been a feature of the last…
It's that time of year again when I try to give readers of this blog some ideas to plant with Father/Mrs/Mr Christmas. When I started this near-annual post a decade ago it was easy to find good things very cheaply, but time, inflation and compound interest have taken their toll and pushed the upper boundary further up the scale. Nevertheless, you will still find the perennial stocking fillers as…
The 2022 record drought River Rye at Helmsley August 2022 Surface temperature 30C 2022 was the driest and hottest spring and summer in my lifetime, worse even than 1976 and 2003. The rain stopped in February and didn't restart until September. This is a stretch of the the River Rye, normally well populated with brown trout, grayling and crayfish, on which I fish for trout in truly beautiful…
Dawn view over the Spey from Tominachty First morning - Piles Right Through the kindness of a friend I spent three days in mid-September on the beautiful Arndilly beat on the Spey. It is one of the most perfect stretches of water that I've ever fished, ticking all the boxes and set in the stunning countryside of the Lower Spey just downstream of Craigellachie. The icing on this superb cake was…
One of the biggest challenges for any salmon fishing novice is getting through the fog of jargon. The meaningless words and phrases that rod manufacturers employ to promote their products are unhelpful and confusing. But the worst area, by far, is the bewildering jungle of names and terms relating to lines, tips and leaders, invented by their manufacturers and compounded by the influence of the…
The Joys of Spring Fishing Farewell Tomatin Last spring we decided that the time had come to leave Tomatin House, the home of Just One Week for the past 20 years and the source of so many happy memories . A host of reasons contributed to the decision, but the simple fact is that the core members of the team - John, Patrick and I - aren't getting any younger so postponement wasn't a sensible…
My experiment with Maxcatch was influenced by the needs of a week on the Spey (the next post). For two reasons there was no point purchasing another rod in the 13 - 14 foot range: first I already have several; and second, it wouldn't add capability that was relevant to the Spey. So the logical response was to buy their Skytouch 15 foot double hander and balance it with their Classic reel. If I…
Two Classic reels Back view It is said that "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery". In that case Loop should be experiencing a warm glow of appreciation of Maxcatch's efforts. However, I judge that unlikely, as Maxcatch doesn't seem to understand copyright law as evidenced by the comparison of the two sections of text below, drawn from the companies' websites: Loop & Maxcatch - identical…
I'm not someone given to complaining, being a life-long optimist who travels (and fishes) hopefully. But I trust that you will forgive the title of this chapter, because by any standard, it's been a bad year, for which the Covid-induced dullness of 2020 was a very poor preparation, and it got off to a very nasty start. On Christmas Day, returning from church - virtue is apparently no insurance -…
The ruins of Jervaulx Abbey The spiritual home of Wensleydale cheese The Abbey Beat comprises almost 2 miles of single bank fishing within the boundaries of the Jervaulx estate on the south side of the River Ure. It is bookable through FishPal. If you wish to have a ghillie, please contact Brian Towers directly on 07850727132. He is also an AAPGAI double-handed casting instructor, which allows you…
Moving Targets Looking back over the past decade or so of Just One Week, it always seems to be the case that no sooner have I tested and reviewed a Vision rod than it becomes obsolete and is withdrawn from sale. I've got used to it now and it hasn't put me off trying new rods and writing about them. In the 2021 product cycle there are some real surprises. Over the past year Vision has completely…
Sleningford Falls Finally, after many months of drear lockdown, I've got something to write about and the inspiration to do so. After one of the driest and coldest early springs on record - February, March and April yielded less than 20mm of rainfall in total - I'm now happily looking at a window streaked with raindrops and listening to the water running through the downpipes off the roof. The…
In the final days of this peculiar season, courtesy of Guide Fly Fishing, I managed to get my hands on a Sage Igniter 12' 6" #7 demonstrator, matched with a Spectrum C reel (described at the end of this report) and Rio Scandi VersiTip #7 line. The intrusions of work - the first since February - weather and a fortnight's compulsory isolation as a result of contact with a Covid case left me only a…
I've now become inured to uncertainty. Nearly 7 months of isolation and lockdown have converged my life's boundaries and underlined the validity of Parkinson's Law that 'commitments expand to fill the available time". In parallel those commitments have become ever more trivial: I love gardening, but it's not intellectually stimulating. Those 7 months have so blunted my expectations that I seem to…