Trout Fishing

(The following article has been reproduced from the July 2000 edition of Trout and Salmon)

Blue skies and trouser-eating dogs by Jon Beer
I was having a cup of tea. I had just arrived at the hotel and Gordon sat me down in a comfy chair and Marjorie had brought me a pot of tea and Teal the dog was snuffling around my ankles in the way they do to be friendly or if you've trodden in something interesting. I was settling into Herrislea House rather nicely

Herrislea House is not a fisherman's hotel, not in the racks-of-rods-in-the-hall-and-a-selection-of-the-local-flies-for-sale-at-the-desk sort of way. it has no water for the exclusive use of guests. Also, there were a couple of blokes playing chess in the bar. They don't allow that sort of thing in a fishing hotel: fishermen aren't that brainy and it unsettles them.

But on the other hand, there were signs that someone around here was fishing on a fairly regular basis. There was a hefty sprinkling of old fishing magazines on the tables and in the sitting room, on the shelf beside the fireplace, there was a large Holy Bible. And next to that was Hugh Falkus's Sea Trout Fishing. Fair enough.

Gordon came over to see if the dog was bothering me but I was quite flattered by all the attention the dog was giving me. We got to talking of the fishing round and about - Gordon and I, that is: the dog was too absorbed in my ankles - and it turned out that Gordon was suffering serious withdrawl symptoms. Running a hotel, it seems, is a time-consuming business and, like everyone else on the islands, Gordon and Marjorie have several other jobs as well. Among other things they have two crofts, breeding cattle and sheep. They were lambing at the moment, taking turns to stay with the ewes through the night. So what with one thing and another Gordon had not been fishing for some time.

And nor had the dog. I had been absently patting his head as he nuzzled around my ankle. Now I looked down at him. The bloody dog had chewed a fair-sized hole in the leg of my trousers. Gordon saw it too. He said the dog did that when he hadn't had enough exercise. I thought it might be a good idea to get Gordon and Teal out fishing as soon as possible: I only had one spare pair of trousers with me.

So the next morning as soon as breakfast had been poured into the other guests, the three of us set off. It was sunny with just wisps of cloud in a huge sky and the gentlest of breezes. It was not raining. It was not blowing a gale. It was all rather extraordinary. It was, after all, Shetland. Did I mention I was on Shetland?

I love islands - especially islands with trout lochs - and Shetland is the best of these trouty islands. Even the Mainland is an island and there are trout lochs everywhere. We passed a couple of fine examples, Tingwall and Asta lochs, as soon as we left the hotel, but Gordon had to feed the cattle before we could start and the cattle were three islands away, at the croft where Marjorie was born, on the island of East Burra. Bridges now link Mainland to Trondra, to West Burra and thence to East Burra. With the cattle fed we headed for the first loch a short distance away across the peat moor.

Houss Loch is typical of a hundred Shetland Lochs. It lies in a shallow depression of moorland, unrelieved by trees of any sort. Low wire fences, mercifully free of barbed wire, are the only features that stand above the grass and heather. Everywhere squelches just a bit. The loch itself is shallow for the most part and it can be disconcerting on the larger lochs to see blokes wading a hundred yards or so from the shore. The waters can be very rich - there are bands of limestone throughout the islands - and the fertile, shallow water can weed up as the season goes on. But there are deeps as well and some sudden drop-offs and gooey bits so you wade on almost every Shetland loch but you wade with caution - or with someone who knows the water.

Gordon got the first fish of the day, a nice fish of 12 inches. The first fish is always a nice fish: it shows the thing still works. Part of the magic of fishing on Shetland is the huge variation in the fish. At any time you can catch something extraordinary. Later that week a fish of 5 lb 7 oz was caught - not, alas, by me. There are no big rivers on Shetland. The coastline is so convoluted that nowhere is more than a mile or so from the sea and most lochs trickle down to the tide through a tiny burn and are fed from water seeping out of the peat. Sometimes the spawning in the burn is good and there will be a lot of small fish. Sometimes it is bad, producing just a few big fish. Then there are the sea-trout, which can surge up through the thinnest of burns to populate a loch. And then there is the Shetland Anglers' Association, which goes about like a caped crusader, righting wrongs and stocking waters. So you just never know.

But we knew about Houss Loch on East Burra because we had a fish. We drove to the next loch with Teal the dog bounding across the peat besid4e the road, working off spare trouser-eating energy. The sun was higher now and the breeze had all but petered out.

Gordon said he couldn't believe it. Not in early May: it just doesn't happen. We crossed the bridge to West Bura and the little hamlet of Grunnasound. Here, just beyond the garden fences lay another shallow bowl of a loch. It was flat calm. I asked Gordon if it was possible to find a fish in a flat calm under a cloudless sky. He said he didn't know:the weather had never been that way before.

It can be done. Just as I was beginning to lose hope there was a long, slow draw on the line as a fish took my fly in the depths. It was a better fish of 15 inches with a buttery belly and bold spots that leaked down to the tail. Even the little adipose fin got into the act with spots of the deepest red. It was noon and already we had caught two fish on two islands.

That was not my first Shetland trout. That had been yesterday on the island of Bressay. Bressay lies a short ferry ride from Lerwick, the capital of Shetland. I was with Alec Miller, the secretary of the Shetland Anglers' Association. Two year ago, in the Western Isles, Philip and I had made an attempt at the world lochisle record. A lochisle is simply an island off the coast with a population of trout - usually in a loch. Catch a trout on that island and you have bagged a lochisle. In five wet and windy days in June, Philip and I bagged a total of 11 lochisles, a record - if only because we were the first fishermen to try it. I had phoned Alec Miller to ask about the fishing on the Shetland Islands and explained my curious inclination t6o fish on as many islands as possible. Alec had taken the thing up with a will: he offered to pick me up from Sumburgh Airport on the southern tip of the Mainland and drive me to the hotel - via a couple of islands - and to fish along the way.

So we had done that. The first fish had come from Setter Loch on Bressay, another water of broad margins where Alec found fish for us feeding in a bay of bright sand. With a lochisle bagged within a couple of hours of arriving on Shetland we caught the ferry back to the Mainland and headed north and west to the island of Muckle Roe that hangs like a testicle beneath the belly of north mainland. We had tried Kilka Water - the Laird's Loch - and the little Orwick Water without seeing a rise or feeling a tug. The evening wore on without a fish and the sun sank as it does even here at 60 deg. N. There was one final chance on Town Loch, which lies about as far from any town as water can get. The tarmac petered out at the southern tip of Muckle Roe: Town Loch lies at the northern tip, at the end of a twisting track gouged into a moonscape of rotted granite and peat bog - which I promptly managed to fall into, flat on my face, under the excitement of Alec hooking the first fish from Muckle Roe. It was a very small fish and a very boggy bog. All in all, I had welcomed that pot of tea.

Back on West Burra under a blazing sun, it was time to move on. We had bagged two lochisles that morning. For the afternoon Gordon had planned something a little different. Gordon has led a variegated life, as most islanders do, especially growing up in the Wild West days of the oil exploration. For some years he ran a sea-taxi service, ferrying peopple and stuff to the Russian factory ships that lay off Shetland. He still has one of the craft he used. We were going to try bagging the small uninhabited island of Oxna.

I had imagined a white clinker-built boat with a comforting diesal whose puk-puk-puk-puk would echo across the voe as we rounded the headland. Gordon's boat isn't really like that. It is an Avon Searider with a 90-horse-power Suzuki engine that had us skimming the sea out of Scalloway, weaving between the rocky islets of Papa and creaming into Oxna bay in less than ten minutes.

Look: we did not catch a fish on Oxna. I am not sorry because the little loch on Oxna is, I believe, the most beautiful spot I have ever fished and now I shall have to go back. I don't know what it was about the place. It could have been the day or the loch itself, its waters the colour of malt whisky in a rocky bowl. Or the birds teeming overhead. Birds teem everywhere on Shetland. I have never heard a place like it. Within an hour or so you will hear every noise a bird can make and one or two you would swear they cannot. They were doing all that on Oxna that afternoon. But when I think back to the few day I spent in the islands it is Oxna and its little house by the bay that I picture.

From Oxna we skimmed across to Hildasay. Here we actually saw a fish that bent Gordon's rod for a few tantalising seconds before disappearing back into the rocky depths.

We were not to be defeated. That evening we sped to the other side of Shetland to catch another ferry to another island. Alec's wife was giving a talk in the village hall of Symbister on Whalsay that evening. Alec had offered to drive her there and Gordon and I had offered to come along for the ride. Lochisleing is, after all, a team effort. And while the good ladies of Whalsay were learning about herbal remedies and alternative therapies, Alec and Gordon and I were off to the remarkably named hamlet of Sodom and the Loch of Huxter where in the last rays of the sun, we scored the third lochisle of a memorable day.

It was brighter than ever the next morning. I don't know how it could get any brighter: it just did. This time it was Gordon's wife Marjorie who provided our excuse to go island-hopping. One of her jobs is to monitor the Meals-on-Wheels service throughout the islands. It seemed like an excellent time to monitor those on Unst, the farthest north of Shetland's islands. We caught the first ferry to Yell and drove the length of the island to Gutcher, where the ferry leaves for Unst. Beside the jetty in Gutcher a narrow shingle bar separates a small loch from the sea. We could see the ferry crabbing through the tide rips from Unst. We had ten minutes or so . A fish rose on the edge of the ripple from a faint breeze off the sea. I had the telescopeic dapping rod set up and it took no time to sail a fly out towards the rise. A fish leapt from the water but a fluke of the breeze wafted the fly from the surface and the fish missed. By the time the ferry was making its way into the jetty Gordon was ready to cast. Teal looked on. The few cars rolled off the ferry and we kept fishing. As the waiting cars drove down the ramp Gordon had a tug and then, in rapid succession, a fish, a photograph, and a quick dash across the road to the ferry as its doors were shutting. First lochisle of the day.

We caught fish on Unst; in fact we caught several. They were not big, but the one I will remember longest was perhaps the smallest. On Unst there is a long, dramatic loch, the Loch of Cliff. It is the most northerly loch on the island and that makes it the most northerly island of the Shetland Islands - and so the most northerly loch in Britain. But we did not catch a fish in the loch of Cliff. Under a third, unbelievable day of remorseless sunshine the fish shrank away from the shallows and hid. Gordon took to snoozing in the sun, something of a novelty in Shetland. But the little burn that drains the loch to the sea flows north. In a pool along that little burn I spotted a trout. And so I caught that trout - the most northerly little trout in the British Isles.

It was Friday evening in Lerwick, the night before the Shetland Trout Festival, a week-long bonanza of furious fishing and competitions to be taken just as seriously as you fancy. On that Friday they have a bit of a do in the cosy upstairs bar of the Shetland Angling Association club rooms. I am not sure the Shetland Anglers should have a bar in their clubhouse. It is irresponsible. Like leaving a sharp knife in the hands of an infant. They could do themselves some harm. Not to mention any visitors from England who are of a delicate disposition. The bar of the Shetland Anglers' clubhouse should carry a government health warning. It was a good do though. And at some point in the middle of it all I found myself agreeing that it would be a fine and noble notion to go fishing at dawn, to bag one last Lochisle before my morning flight back home.

And so we did. Four hours later, on Grass Water, just beyond the village of Twatt, Gordon and I bagged the Mainland.