

*****

Born to Fish

Forced to Work

By Roger Beale

*****

Copyright © 2012 Roger Beale

All rights reserved. ISBN:

Smashwords Edition

Formatting services provided by

Mother Spider Marketing at

http://www.motherspider.com

*****

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all the friends who have fished with me over the last 70 years in Scotland and Ireland. Sadly many have passed on but they were able to impart to me many years of their experiences.

*****

Contents

Acknowedgements

Prologue

1942-1952 Glenforsa

1952-1983 Rhodesia

Holidays out of Africa

Douneish, Ireland

Glenforsa, Caithness

Wild Trout Management

NIWF Fly Fishing Lesson

Helpful Links

Tight Lines

About The Author

*****

# Acknowledgements

To all my fishing partners today who put up with me for many days each season. And to my wife Brenda, whose support at home allows me to take so many days off work to go fishing.

*****

# Prologue

Well, the 2012 fishing season is finished now in Caithness and Sutherland. It was a cold season with very little fly life, which made us work hard for our wild trout. Despite this, we had 1384 wild brown trout in our boat. The fish were 10" or better; the best was 6lb 2oz, with another of 2lb 12oz, several more over the 2lb mark and many over 1lb .

I fished with several partners, all of whom have contributed to the boat's total.

My thanks go to my wife Brenda and the others (in no specific order) – Jim Linton Orkney, Kenny Mackenzie and Alistair Taylor from Thurso, David Bond and Gordon Warren from Halkirk, Charlie MacNeil from Lairg and Anna Mayer from Ullapool. Last but not least, our octogenarian, Peter Bryan from Jersey

Fishing for 111 days, starting on March 15th and ending on October 6th, the following four lochs were fished in Caithness with the Dounreay Fly Fishing Association: Calder, Watten, Sempster and Seilge (Big House Estate). Lochs also in Caithness include Ruard (Latheron Estate) and Toffingal (Hugo Ross). In Sutherland we fished Ruthair (Archentoul Estate) and Seltill; and Lier and Coal from the Forsinard Hotel.

Mostly we were fishing an intermediate tip line known as the NIWF BUG Tip designed by myself to make casting easier in any of the winds we have in Caithness or Sutherland.

We also were using five wet flies on a cast with the top fly tied directly to the loop in the braid at the end of the line.

This top fly on the braid, just 5-6 inches from the line, accounted for more than 50% of the wild trout we caught.

This shows that wild brown trout are not gut shy and there is no need to use long and difficult-to-handle leaders.

Also the nylon used most was MAXIMA Chameleon 10lb, which does not make too many tangles even in a 20mph wind! A 10' or a 10'6" rod completes the tackle used. For comfort we had conference chairs in the boat, thus enabling the angler to sit broadside to the action – usually two in the smaller boats with three chairs and anglers in the larger boats on the lochs. This extra comfort allows the angler to concentrate on the fishing, being less tired and more alert when a wild trout takes on the top.

What you have just read is really the end of this book; the end of the story of my Fishing, Shooting and Farming life spanning some 77 plus years.

My aim is to try to instill as much pleasure in fly fishing in my readers as I have enjoyed over the 70 years of my fly fishing experiences.

*****

# 1. 1942-1952 Glenforsa

It all started when I was seven years old. My first sporting memory was being led, wading, across the Forsa River at dusk by my father. My father had taken me hind stalking on the Glenforsa Estate that cold January day in 1942.

He had killed his hind but I do not remember much about the stalk, only the river crossing on the way home. The water was very cold and well over my little knees. The rifle he had borrowed from Colonel Gardine, who was the owner at that time, was a double-barrelled .303; I cannot remember the maker's name, though. My clear memory of this rifle must reveal the beginning of my interest in sporting guns.

We, the whole family, were spending the Christmas holidays at the Salen Hotel on the Isle of Mull, while Father was negotiating and inspecting the Glenforsa Estate before he purchased it, hence the days of hind stalking.

I had to return to school at the end of the holidays to Gilling Castle, the preparatory school for Ampleforth College in Yorkshire.

By the Easter holidays, the family was in residence at Glenforsa House, with the whole estate of 15000 acres for a seven-year- old boy to run around on. What a delight that was for me; and it seems that it shaped my life from then on as I developed an interest in fishing, shooting, stalking and farming.

This record of my life will be mostly about fly fishing, which I am still actively pursuing 70 years later. My shooting days were over when I left Rhodesia in 1984, and I shot my last stag in 2008 with 52 years between the last two stags. Farming I left in 1984 when I sold my interest in R B Ranchers before leaving Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, for Connemara on the west coast of Ireland for more fishing.

My father, Roy Beale was a grocer, running the family business, Green Stores with 110 shops around the city; he commuted most weekends from London to Mull. Mother, Isabelle was a full-time mother to us all; George, Ann, John, Roger and Walter. As we grew up, I was the only one taking full advantage of the sporting facilities of the estate and the only one to take up fishing.

I had a large number of uncles and aunts and many cousins who all seemed to invade Glenforsa during the school holidays. I remember sitting down in the dining room with 18 of us at the table. The children had to take turns in the daily chores, with 18 places to lay at the table and all the washing up afterwards.

In August 1942, Father had guests to stay and one of them was Monsignor Canon Bickford, who was a keen fisherman, and it was he who lent me one of his rods and showed me how to fish. The rod was a hardy 6' split cane and it was set up as a dry fly outfit. So I started dry fly fishing, a habit that carried on for the next 25 years. It was a slow start as it was five days before I caught my first little trout, but from then on I was hooked!

The Forsa River was a typical highland spate salmon river and not conducive to trout, although our keeper in a later year caught a 2 pounder and a 1.5 pounder on a worm from the bridge pool.

As you can imagine, few fish were caught by we beginners, but we were shown the full potential of this little river when the Ampleforth Sea Scouts visited in about 1945 and 1946 and camped on the estate. They arrived with Father Jerome Lambert, the scout master and set about having a good time. As there was a serious drought on, we could see the salmon and sea trout in a couple of pools and they were so tempting that the scouts had permission to see if they could catch some for the house (wartime rations were very tight in those days). Well, the estate had a net but nobody knew how to use it, but soon it was deployed in the larder pool and produced 8 salmon to 10lbs and several sea trout to 4lbs, all gratefully received to feed all the guests at the big house.

Several days later, it was noticed that there were lots of sea trout in the river's estuary at low tide. When the tide went out the estuary had a sandbank on either side, extending for about 150 yards each side; this made it easy to place the net at the sea end of the estuary and the scouts and other willing helpers, myself included, started wading and splashing at the river end and drove the unwilling sea trout out to sea, where they were caught in the net that we had positioned very quietly there. The catch that day was 210 sea trout, 0.5lb to 1lb. That was great, but there were too many for the house and scouts to use and I remember loading my bicycle with trout and distributing them to every cottage in Salen village, which was three miles away.

Although I spent many unproductive hours on the river, I enjoyed myself messing around with my 9' greenheart rod that I had been given for Christmas one year.

Loch Scauben, at the south end of the estate, was a salmon and sea trout loch that we shared with our neighbour. One day, in the summer holidays of 1949, I was fishing the pool just below the loch when I hooked my first sea trout. I was so excited that, when landing the fish, I must have stepped on the line that I had been hand-lining and not reeling in and I broke the top of the greenheart rod, but I still landed my first sea trout.

Now I was without a rod and had to get another. At that time I was in St Aidan's House at Ampleforth. My housemaster, Father Anthony, who was a very keen fisherman himself and a visitor to Glenforsa, suggested that he could get one of the boy's parents to get me an outfit from one of the sporting sales like Sotheby's or Christie's; this suggestion was jumped at.

A few months later my new second hand 9' split cane, Walker Brampton with lockfast joints and a spare top, complete with an aluminum reel made by Farlows, arrived. This rod was my pride and joy until it was replaced by a modern carbon rod in 1976.

My early fishing years were greatly helped by Father Anthony, my housemaster who realised, as he said to me one day when I asked permission to go fishing instead of playing cricket, "Well, Beale, we will never make a cricketer of you but we might make a fisherman, permission granted."

This, of course, was just a start as I now needed a bicycle to go to the local rivers nearby, so I had to ask him if I could borrow a bicycle as only 6th Formers were allowed them and I was in the 4th Form at the time. Permission was granted but, as a lowly 4th Former, I did not know any 6th Formers. What should I do but take the bull by its horns? I approached the head of house who very kindly lent me his bicycle. This enabled me to fish during many afternoons while the others were playing cricket.

Also at school there were feast days when we could go fishing; a bus was organised that would take us to various rivers and a few boys were dropped off at each. All told, I caught more fish at Ampleforth than I did at home during the summer holidays, where we had our own river, but never a spate while I was there. The fishing bug was well and truly installed in me during those years at Glenforsa and my schooldays.

During those years at Glenforsa, I started shooting and I remember starting with a Belgium 4.10 single-barrelled hammer gun, but soon progressed to a 16 bore made by Charles Lancaster of Leicester. We had rabbits, snipe, woodcock and we put down a few pheasants, so there was plenty of rough shooting to learn on. One day, while walking along a path with the gun, I shot at a rabbit as it disappeared under a rhododendron bush and thought I had missed it. But when I walked past I heard a scratching noise and said to myself that I must have hit the rabbit after all. On looking under the bush, there was a woodcock. So I shot at a rabbit and picked up a woodcock.

Well, as you can imagine, I was out with the gun every time I was allowed. My brothers had to have their turn as well, but I made the most of my time shooting in the winter, rabbiting in the Easter holidays and fishing in the summer.

I think it was 1947 when I was 12 years old. I was allowed to go out stalking with a shepherd, Sandy Douglas and my first stag was an 8 pointer, 17st 2lbs that we got on Ben Talla. I remember the weight, but I cannot remember the date as my game books have been lost over the years. (I can only tell you all to look after those precious game books and not rely on an aging memory like I have to do now.)

Red deer stalking became my great passion and before we left Glenforsa I was able to get the whole sequence (a switch) of 2 pointers to a 12 pointer (a Royal). There was fierce competition with my brother John, who had another shepherd, John Macabe as his stalker, about the number of cartridges used per stag. One day I had a downhill shot at an 8 pointer and the beast took two paces forward and shook his head. This was very strange and a little unnerving as I had to think about giving it another round, which would have been up to John. After a minute I placed another round into the stag and he did the same as before; took two paces forward and shook his head. Well, we had seen nothing like this and we watched for another minute or two, ready to use another round, but just when I was about to fire again the stag dropped down dead. When the stag was back home in the larder and skinned, it was found that my two shots had formed a figure eight on entry, but had separated on exit due to the two paces the stag had taken. After that episode, I took to using a neck shot.

We had a .22 Bruno, which we used for rabbits, but for stalking we used a Holland and Holland 240 rifle. It was light weight, with a very flat trajectory. It had a telescopic sight but we always used the open sights; our eyes were younger in those days.

As you will have read, we were very privileged and spoilt with all this sport and the facilities supplied by Father, but I feel that this sporting education paid better dividends than the formal education at Ampleforth, as I admit I was not a good scholar as I have been hard of hearing all my life (my wife says I am deaf ) and I found it very hard to hear, so paying attention in class was very difficult.

My hearing difficulties started before we went to Glenforsa when I was about six. Father had taken me out shooting in Essex with some of his friends and I was standing beside this friend when he fired both barrels over the top of my little head and I remember it hurt my ears a lot. It was not a dangerous move or anything like that, but very noisy for a young chap. Note that care should be taken with one's ears before it is too late, as it was for me. I have never used ear muffs at all and now it is too late to rectify any damage inflicted over the years.

Our social life at Glenforsa was sometimes hectic with the house full of guests and relations, and the parents enjoying parties and dances. The main dance season was in September before the Oban Ball; we went from one end of the island at Tobermory to the other end at Duart Castle. We all had to practise the highland dances that were going to be danced at the forthcoming Oban Ball that year. We had a dance at home in September each year and another at Christmas, primarily for the estate staff. So with all the reciprocal invitations, we were nearly danced off our feet.

Father had installed a small hydroelectric scheme on the estate as, at that time, there was no mains electricity, so before each party there was no electricity in the house as we had to save the water in the hydro scheme for the party night.

When I was not fishing, shooting or stalking I was with the men on the farm learning what I could about sheep and cattle.

Father had recently bought a fold of Highland cattle from the north of the Island and it was a two-day trek home with them;

I was allowed to go with the cattle as they were driven home. I remember on this drive that I was placed in a gateway where I had to outface a Highland cow with her calf; that was when I learnt that you had to show no fear even if you were terrified yourself.

In the summer holidays I helped with the sheep at the fank after they had been gathered for dipping or sorting. For all this hard labour, I was paid 6d per hour (nowadays 2.5p). This got a bit complicated, so the farm foreman, Johnny Miller suggested to Father that I should be given the black lambs to sell each year. But when the lambs were going to market in September, we were only selling the wedder lambs and keeping the ewe lambs, including the black ones, to build up the stock. So at the Oban market, if the estate had seven black lambs that year then I could select seven wedder lambs to make up a good-looking pen. As we had about 500 lambs, half our total lamb crop at the first lamb sale, my pen of seven were carefully selected from this group and often topped the Oban sale. It all sounds a lot, but I remember that my lambs sold one year for £3.15 shillings which was a total of £26.25 for a year's work with the sheep, or fencing, haymaking and other farm jobs. This was all a good learning curve for my future farming career. It was this hard-earned money (my holiday pocket money) that I used to buy my new fishing rod and my new gun, etc.

One year, Father took Johnny Miller, the farm manager and Bertie Macgregor, a shepherd to Lanark Tup sales. I also went along and bought a couple of Tup lambs and let them grow so I could make a profit. So I purchased three at 15gns, which came home along with several that Father bought.

When we off-loaded them from the train at Oban to put them on the MacBrayne's SS Lochinvar to Salen, we had to drive them through the streets of Oban. Well, driving a small group of lambs through the streets turned out to be a rodeo. One of my lambs decided to go shopping and entered a china shop; luckily it was moved out without breaking anything. That was not all; when they were at the ramp on the pier, another of my lambs bolted straight into the sea and started swimming away. Eventually a seaman got a boat and rescued it. It was not a promising start to my first livestock deal and in a few days I sold the three pedigree Tup lambs to the estate at cost.

In those days all livestock was driven on the roads from the train to ship or market; with 500 lambs going to market it seemed easier than with seven or eight as we did not have half as much excitement.

In the early days, to us young boys, it was an adventure, crossing to Mull, where the Lochinvar called at Craignure then crossed over to Loch Arline on the Morvern mainland, before crossing over to Mull again to Salen where we got off. The Lochinvar then continued up the Sound to Tobermory, where it stayed the night, going back to Oban in the morning. On a calm day I got to steer the Lochinvar but found it very hard to keep it in a straight line like the seamen did and, looking back at the wake of the ship, you could easily see that I was not qualified.

As we approached Salen we had a magnificent view up the glen and beyond, close to the Green Isles in the Sound. They were a group of five small islands that were part of the estate but too small to do anything with.

During 1951, Father bought a tobacco farm at Norton and a cattle ranch at Gwelo in Southern Rhodesia, so for the Christmas holidays we were flown out to Africa on a BOAC constellation via Benghazi. It was a new experience to enjoy, but I was saddened that Father was selling Glenforsa.

On the way back to school after the holidays, I had a few hours in London before catching the Ampleforth train so I found myself in New Bond Street and visited Holland and Holland, the gunmakers. As a young 17 year-old, I walked in and asked if they had any shotguns for sale. Well, they had one that I could afford; a non-ejector back action sidelock with new barrels for £60, made in approximately 1880, the maker's number was 20758. I walked out of the shop with the gun. I cannot remember how I paid for it but I must have done. I would not have had that much on me, so I must have used my Post Office savings book and got the cash. I caught the train to school and arrived with my new shotgun that had to be handed to Father Anthony, the housemaster to look after. The next holidays I had to go to Holland and Holland's shooting school to have the gun fitted, which needed a 5/8th inch cast off. Father must have paid for this as I don't remember paying.

That Easter holidays I went to stay in Salen with Bertie and Mrs Macgregor, who ran a Bed and Breakfast house just behind the White's black shop. While there I worked with Alistair Cattanach who was a fencing contractor, so I acquired some more knowledge of fencing as well as some pocket money.

I had my new gun with me, so I had a couple of days' ferreting. And one afternoon I had 32 rabbits, but no fishing at that time of year.

*****

# 2. 1952-1983 Rhodesia

I returned to Ampleforth in the May of 1952 for my last term of school; I was only in the Upper 5th as I was not academically-minded and there was no point in keeping me in further education. In July, when term broke up, I met up with my sister Ann in London and boarded the SS Uganda for its maiden voyage to Africa.

This was organised by Father's office and we were given £50 pocket money for the two of us and told that we were to take the train from Beira to the farm near Gwelo. The trip was a month and we did not know whether we had to pay for the train ticket when we got off the boat at Beira. So we decided that we could spend only a total of £25.00 during the month- long boat trip between the two of us. It was a hard trip for us both as, without pocket money to spend, we were unable to enjoy the activities and we had to pick and choose. I think this put us off cruising for life; I know I have no wish to go on a cruise now and sister Ann has not done so either.

On arriving at Beira we found that the train tickets were all organised, so all our skimping and saving had been unnecessary. A little knowledge would have made the trip so much nicer; I wish we had had all the information to hand.

The train went overnight to Salisbury and then on to Gwelo the next morning. The train stopped for us to get off at a siding called Marimba, which was the edge of the farm, 20 miles north of Gwelo.

It was exciting stepping off the train in the middle of nowhere. We were met but I cannot remember by whom. From the siding it was a short three-mile drive to the house.

It was the dry season in Rhodesia in August; the rains came only between mid-November and March. So it was dry and dusty with cloudless days varying in temperature from a very slight frost some mornings to 65-70 degrees.

I started working for my father on the farm for £15.00 per month and board. It was really a cattle ranch of some 20000 acres, consisting of four farms; Clifton Down and Cumberland of 4000 acres each, Riversdale and Allysloper of 6000 acres each, all adjoining, with some 2000 head of cattle that had to be dipped every week against ticks that carried several fatal diseases for cattle. It also had two blocks of agricultural land, although these areas were very marginal with sporadic rainfall. Ploughing was done with a span of 16 oxen with a two or three disc plough. The span was led by a young African boy with reams (cow hide or game hide ropes) around the leading two oxen's horns with the driver walking beside the span with a whip on a long pole, encouraging the oxen to pull their weight. You can imagine the rodeo when training the young oxen to start with.

Two oxen were also used to pull the scotch cart, a two-wheeled light cart, for small jobs around the farm, or up to a full span of 16 to pull a larger four-wheeled wagon like those used on the great treks at the turn of the century; so things had not developed much but that was the slow pace of life in the colonies at that time.

The lands had to be ploughed in the dry season to have them ready for planting as soon as the rains arrived in November. The soil was rock hard and each plough had to be set correctly for each different field or it would have just skimmed the surface and you would not have had a good seed bed.

We got our first tractor shortly after I arrived at the ranch; it was a grey petrol/paraffin Ferguson and eventually we had six of them at one time. Because it was petrol/paraffin it caused problems as the drivers could not understand that they had to switch over the fuel. Also the fuels came in 44 gallon drums that had to be manhandled up a ramp in the fuel shed so that they could be decanted into jerry cans to fill up the tractors.

You can image the troubles we had with dirty fuel and training the local drivers.

It was a steep learning curve for me as I was used to working with the men at Glenforsa who were specialists at their jobs. The Africans were mostly willing to be trained and when I left Africa there was one tractor driver working on the farm who had started with us as a young boy leading the oxen span just mentioned above. So he progressed from the oxen to be a first- rate tractor driver. Other African staff, who took to our ways, were still with us after 25 years' service. I was lucky when I employed Daniel Ngole as foreman in the mid-1950s; he was still there as foreman when I left in 1983, despite other farmers having tried to poach him as he was an exceptional and loyal leader of Africans.

Over the 20000 acres we had several species of game; kudu, impala, tsessebe, reedbuck, duiker, steinbok, together with wild dogs. There was a plentiful supply of guinea fowl, franklin, doves and sometimes quail. During the rainy season ducks would pass through, settling on our dams and pans (wet swampy areas during the rains).

During that first wet season in 1952, at about Christmas time, I went to one of the dams with my new Holland and Holland and, taking my first shots at African birds, I downed a right and left at duck; after that the average fell way down for many years. To begin with, the shooting mostly involved me walking up to likely looking places such as thorn thickets and water holes. We had to go and switch off the diesel engine pumps that were filling the water tanks from a borehole, so often I would take a gun with me. After a time we progressed to a party of 4-6 guns in line, walking around the arable blocks after franklin and guinea fowl. This produced more sport and when we had good dogs it was even better.

Our line had an African beating between the guns and memorable days included over 150 birds on many occasions walking up. One extraordinary shoot was away from home in Matabeleland where four guns and four dogs had a bag of 320 mixed birds for the day on Joe Goode's ranch some 100 miles from home. If the shoot had carried on for a few more minutes, I would have run out of cartridges as I ended up with two in my gun and one left in my belt and an empty cartridge bag.

Trout fishing was only to be had 180 miles away in Inyanga up in the mountains on the eastern border with Mozambique. I had been there on a few occasions but found the small rivers were different to the dry fly streams that I had been used to, but I had fun and learnt a bit about downstream wet fly fishing. I even tried downstream dry fly, which was quite successful until your fly started dragging. It was mostly hot and sunny while we were trout fishing but if we got a cloudy day we could have good results. While fishing the upper Pungwe River, which held a large stock of small trout that had been introduced many years before, I had a bag of 32 reasonable fish that had to be carried up a very steep hill to where the car was parked. I never had the energy to repeat fishing this stretch again.

The staff at the parks had recently stocked one of the artificial lakes with ¾lb trout so Norman and I had a day there and I caught a fish and, while playing it, I saw another fish following the fish that I was playing. I said to Norman, "Look at that silly fish following my fish." On landing the fish, we realised that I had caught two. I was so disgusted that I refused to go there again and I have shunned stocked fisheries ever since. Now I only go after wild trout.

In August 1956, four years after we left Glenforsa, I had my first holiday back in the UK. Father had given me the plane ticket for my 21st birthday. Off I went and the first stop was Belgrade, where my brother John was vice consul and he had arranged some fishing for me. I borrowed his car drove 200 miles north to Zagreb and met up with a school teacher who was a fisherman and he ran a Bed and Breakfast house where I stayed.

My host took me down to the river one evening and showed me a stretch of about 50 yards of running stream. He said to fish just from this bit down and then to repeat it until it got dark. This I did and came away with nine nice trout. This was an essential lesson in knowing your water; a lesson given by a local fisherman.

On arrival in London I had the use of Father's car, an old Rover 20hp that had no synchromesh in the gear box so I had to adjust to double declutching. This car did well and took me around all the relations, etc. And it got me up to Scotland in August where I stayed with the Struthers at Ardmaddy Castle near Oban.

Major Struthers, a friend of Father's, was at that time the High Sheriff of Argyll. They had large gardens and when the Queen was visiting Oban on the west coast on the Britannia, we were instructed to go and pick raspberries in the garden for the Queen to have on the Royal Yacht Britannia. I am afraid to say that I must have eaten more raspberries than I picked for the Queen. Also we had a great view of the Queen and her cavalcade as we were sent down to the slipway where the Britannia launch, bringing the Queen, was docking.

In September there was the Oban Ball and I stayed at Ardmaddy again. After the ball I went to Mull, where I had rented Glenforsa for the stalking for a month. The agreement was for ten stags for £150; I was to supply the stalker, etc. I stayed with the Macgregors in Salen and I arranged for Alastair Cattanach to be the stalker, but he could only do it for three weeks of the four and the third week I was on my own.

On the first day out on the hill we had a successful stalk and got a stag. Went back for Prince, the pony and when the stag was loaded onto the saddle and the jacket came off Prince's head, he bolted. While trying to hold the pony, the bridle broke and I fell and dislocated my right shoulder. Alastair had to put the shoulder back as we were three miles from the car. He asked what he should do, so I told him he had to push and pull until it went into place. Luckily it was done quite quickly. We left the stag on the ground, as the saddle had broken as well, and got back to the car. I had to drive one-handed back to the village where I went to the doctor who said that the shoulder was back in place and time would heal it, but he advised me not to use it. Well, that was my stalking over for a couple of weeks, but Uncle Tom had come up to stay to do a bit of stalking; now he had to do more.

The next day we had to collect the stag that we had left out on the hill when the harness had broken. We reverted to dragging the stag as the saddle was beyond repair.

Over the next two weeks, Alistair and I took Uncle Tom out while he got a few stags. One stalk that I watched had Uncle Tom, who was 65 then and fairly portly, crawling nearly one mile as the stag was down by the river on the flat. He told Alistair several times that he wanted to give up but he was encouraged to carry on and eventually he was successful with another stag.

Uncle Tom had to return to London but I had invited my cousin, Richard Beale to come up for a week, which coincided with the week Alistair was off.

This meant that I was the stalker. Richard had never had a stag so it was a pleasure and a delight to me, as the stalker, when he got his first stag and was suitably bloodied by me. This was truly the highlight of my stalking career. What can be better than taking a novice out and getting them their first stag? The next week I was by myself and so, with Alistair, we got the stags needed to make up the ten that were required. Little did I know that it would be 56 years before I was on the hill stalking again for another stag...

Back to Rhodesia to work again after this, a holiday of a lifetime at the age of 21, was quite a shock. I cannot tell you what year it was when I started having a fishing holiday, travelling from Rhodesia to Scotland, but I must tell you now about the farming we were doing during the 1956-1966 time frame.

We were dealing in cattle, buying and selling about 3000 head a year, so it was all go. Some were sold, with a weekly contract of 15 head, to a local butcher who paid us for the dressed carcasses. Also we sold other cattle not ready for the butcher at the weekly cattle sale held in Gwelo, where we would buy as well as sell. Most of our stock was bought in the native purchase areas or native reserves as they were called; they had government-sponsored auctions on a regular basis.

The government buyer attended every sale he was sent to by the Cold Storage Commission and he had to take all the cattle at the floor price, which was calculated on the grade and weight of the animal.

As the natives brought the cattle to the sale, a government grader classified them into classes based on their condition.

The bottom class was Inferior or 'very poor condition' due to the over-grazing in the reserves; this class was of no interest to the CSC buyer (although he had to take them if there were no bids). So we bought many of them as a few months of good grazing soon turned them around. These sales were held sometimes 100 miles away from any centre, right in the middle of the African bush. We often went out for a four-day run of sales and camped out each night at the next day's sale.

As the Africans were paid out in cash, we the buyers had to take cash and deposit it with the auctioneers before we were allowed to buy. I used to collect £4000 cash in 10 and 20 pound notes on a Sunday morning before leaving for the Monday sale.

It was amazing that, while this was going on, there were no highjacks or robberies as there would have been in excess of £50000 cash without any guards in any one of these remote spots any week. I never saw anyone with a gun and did not take one myself.

The several buyers who attended usually travelled with their own staff of cook, branding boy and several drovers, one for each day's sale. During the sale, when the animal was knocked down to you as it left the ring, it were branded by your boy with your brand that you had brought with you and placed in your buyer's pen. The seller was then immediately paid the bid price by the auctioneer but you had to pay the expenses and tax of 15% on top of the hammer price.

At the end of the day you had a pen of cattle to get home, sometimes many miles away from the railway point or home. One of your drover boys would then recruit one or more locals who were engaged to get the group to the railhead or straight home.

Some of these sales could take a cattle drive of up to five days to get to the railhead or home. Usually you needed three drovers for 50 head or four drovers for 100; they were paid 2/6p per day with a food allowance. Also we paid a bonus of £1 per drover if the herd was delivered intact. The African sellers got up to several tricks; they would sell a cow that had weaned its calf the day before. This cow would try to return to its calf and you could easily loose one or two head this way. The £1 bonus worked for us 99% of the time and the drovers liked it; we often had the same drovers for the next sale in that area. The buyers were the usual crowd that you met regularly at the sales and you heard stories of lost animals from the sales but these buyers did not offer the £1 bonus. The average price paid could vary a lot but many inferior grades were bought for less than £10 a head.

During the winters we had to feed the herd so we made some 40000 bales of hay. We cut the clear areas of the thorn bush country but the yield was only about 30 bales an acre. We started in January and finished in March, trying to make 1000 bales a day, which could be done, weather, machinery and hay gang permitting.

We had a special puncture unit that had spare wheels for the trailers and tractors as the thorns were very active on the tyres. An inner tube could have up to 20 patches before it was discarded. These punctures were repaired underneath a tree in the field where we were haymaking so that the operation was not held up. Each trailer-load of bales carried 80 plus bales, so 12 loads were the set work for the day. If they achieved more than this number, it was credited to their Saturdays so the gang could get off early. This system worked well and did away with excuses of breakdowns, punctures, trailer-loads falling off on the way home, etc, which were the usual excuses for very little work. The staff liked this as they had a chance to get Saturday off. The only thing that could affect the system was rain, but we did not have too much of that. Some days we could cut, rake and bale on the same day on these light crops.

While speculating, we bought a pen of oxen that contained some strange long-eared oxen. As they were readily remembered by their long ears, this group was followed through our system easily; they were Brahman first cross and did so well that we decided to breed them. We soon found out that there were only three small Brahman herds in the country and bulls were in very short supply. We were lucky to purchase two bulls and started an AI programme. Not knowing anything about AI, I got some lessons from our vet and a farmer who was already doing it. In those days there was no frozen semen like today, so when we collected the semen from one bull we mixed it with milk and glycerine and kept it in the fridge for three days. It was not ideal but it worked and we only had the two bulls. Of course it would have been better with seven bulls, one for each day. After a lot of trial and error, our first season produced some 140 calves. As AI was not really satisfactory for our extensive ranching conditions, we needed more bulls but they were not available in the country. A decision was made to start our own pedigree Brahman herd, so in January 1962 I went to the States to buy the nucleus of one bull and seven females.

I met Uncle Tom in Houston, Texas and he accompanied me on that first of 12 buying trips over the next 20 years. Uncle Tom made such an impression on that trip that people were asking after him 20 years later.

I bought a bull and a couple of cows that had just come off the show string at the J D Hudgins ranch, Hungerford.

I bought the other four females at the show sale after Leon Locke, a member of the J D Hudgins group, said he would pay for any purchases that I made at the sale as the conditions of sale were cash on the day, which I could not have managed as I had a letter of credit payable for when the cattle were shipped. After a couple of months' testing, the Brahmans arrived in Rhodesia at the Plumtree quarantine station for another month of veterinary testing, then they were home to Riverdale, the Gwelo ranch.

The herd was called Rhobest pedigree Brahmans and it was quickly added to as we purchased another six females from a local breeder. Also we purchased a group of 13 pure Indian Brahmans that had originated from India, gone to Malawi and thence to Rhodesia. After several years these Indian Brahmans were incorporated into the ABBA stud book (American Brahman Breeders' Association). At that time they numbered some 30 females. 20 years later the total of the two pedigree herds was 1000 head, with some 400 breeding cows.

In 1963 we held the first Brahman field day in Rhodesia with some 200 farmers and ranchers attending. They were addressed by Leon Locke of J D Hudgins and Harry Gayden, Executive Officer of the American Brahman Breeders' Association, who were both impressed with the Rhodesian ranching countryside.

In 1967 I took a show string down of ten head to the Rand Easter show in Johannesburg where we won the champion female and eight other prize tickets. I was disappointed that out of ten head, we only got nine prize tickets.

We had to hold the show string in quarantine for 30 days in Kempton Park. It was a big operation taking a show string, our best cattle, such a long way by train.

We organised with Rhodesian Railways for our two cattle trucks and the flatcar with my mini on board to be attached to passenger trains, so we had a fixed timetable. I travelled in a cattle truck with our champion cow and new calf. Two other staff went in the other trucks with cattle, as the third truck was carrying feed, etc. When we arrived at Mafeking at 5 am, we left Rhodesian Railways and transferred to the South African rail system. After an hour's wait with nothing moving I found the station master in his office and enquired what was going on. I got a vague answer; when the goods 22 down arrived, it might have room to take us further down the line. This was not what I had arranged with Rhodesian Railways, who had assured me that they had organised the South African side as well. I then told the station master that, even in a civilised country, my cattle travelled on a passenger train. The station master was very upset and accused me of calling South Africa uncivilised. I had to explain to him that we had travelled down on a passenger train and we expected to continue to our destination at Kempton Park where I had transport already booked for 9 am that morning. He asked me to go back to my cattle trucks and wait as he would sort something out. I waited less than half an hour before we were hitched up to an engine and started rolling on our way. I looked out of the door and there was the engine and the two cattle trucks with my mini on the flat car and the guard's van at the end. About two hours later, there was toot from the engine and I looked out as we passed through Johannesburg passenger station in my private train. That turned out to be a good service from the South African Railways.

A joint venture was entered into with the Norris Cattle Company, Florida; they sent 50 cows and two bulls to Cape Town at their expense and we took them over from there and ran them, at our expense, while they received 50% of the sales.

At the end of ten years it was agreed that the herd would be divided equally. This herd was called Rhonor pedigree Brahmans. These were not halter-trained like the first consignment and when they arrived at Plumtree quarantine station they went wild and nearly destroyed the whole setup there.

I received an urgent call from the director of veterinary services to fly down to Bulawayo and Plumtree and load the cattle back onto their original train wagons, which were still there. When I got to Plumtree, I saw some of the damage that they had caused; they had knocked several pillars down, bringing the roof down as well. The quarantine staff were terrified of the cattle and that only made the cattle worse.

My foreman, Daniel Ngole was with the cattle as he had gone to Cape Town to travel back by train to water the cattle on the five-day rail journey. The first thing we did was to clear the entire staff out of the station. When this was done, Daniel and I shut all the gates and opened the ones that allowed a passage to the rail wagons. We opened one of the rail truck's doors and then slowly, with just the two of us and no noise, we drove a bunch of cattle into one side of the first wagon, repeating this procedure four times and the job was done – by just the two of us.

The cattle were quickly dispatched to Salisbury, loaded onto trucks and delivered to United Farm, where we had prepared one of larger pens in a quarantine area in readiness for the veterinary department.

A word here about cattle handling. It is surprising that on many ranches and farms the handling of cattle leaves a lot to be desired; often a simple dosing or inoculating programme turns into a world class rodeo. The secret to good, quiet handling is never to have more staff around than is necessary; the tendency here is to bring in more helpers (who are untrained and therefore cause more chaos) when what is needed is to reduce the numbers around the cattle.

Cattle are very intelligent and they respond to the type of handling given. When they are given rough and wild handling, they will become wild and difficult to handle. On the other hand, if they are handled quietly and gently, they will become quiet and gentle. This is particularly true of Brahmans who are the most intelligent of the domestic breeds and have a false reputation for being wild, which just reflects the kind of management they are receiving. I always told my staff that if they could not handle the animal, then the animal in question was more intelligent than the handler. If one had wild cattle it could take several weeks or months to retrain the staff and cattle, but then, after training, you had a herd that could easily be handled for any operation. Like weekly dipping, for example, with no problems at all; dosing cattle at an average of 100 per hour.

Our record handling rate, I think, was taking blood samples for the veterinary dept. We took 220 samples in two hours. Out of a staff of 30 Africans, only seven were allowed near the cattle and they did nothing except feed and look after the cattle.

In 1966 we bought United Farm 12 miles west of Salisbury in order to really promote Rhobest Brahmans and we started turning our whole herd into a pedigree registered herd. We had been looking for a Salisbury-based farm for some time without success and it was during the Salisbury show that we attended an auction on the Friday for a farm east of Salisbury and we were the under-bidders at £25000 so we did not get the farm. Shortly after the sale the auctioneer, George Robinson of Shapiro's came to us and told us about a farm next to his own called United. It was actually the farm of the person who had just out-bid us at the recent auction. We went out to view the farm that afternoon and said we would buy it.

It consisted of 3000 acres with a house and it was £22000. Everything was signed, sealed and settled the following Monday with possession being arranged for the Monday after; so it was just ten days after the first viewing that we moved in.

The Monday of moving, we loaded three tractors, ploughs, etc onto two railway wagons at our local siding. They were to arrive at the new farm's local siding, Marimba at 12 noon on the Tuesday. Our cattle lorry was dispatched to United early on Tuesday with the selected staff who were moving with us and I went in my farm car, which was a Mini Minor with the front seat removed. We arrived in good time and the tractor drivers had time for their lunch before we met the train at Marimba siding.

We offloaded the tractors and they went straight into the fields to start ploughing as they had been fully-fuelled before we had loaded them onto the train the day before. And the other staff had time to start preparing for the arrival of the cattle. We had to build several new cattle-handling facilities as it had been a dairy farm and we were beef.

We recruited new labour as we had moved only nine staff from the Gwelo farm, and most of the staff were still with us 20 years later. Being the new boy in the district, there were plenty of Africans applying for a job but very few wanting to work in the first three months on United. 90 Africans left our employ as they could not take the workload and discipline, but three of the new recruits stayed with us for 20 years. It was just a question of selecting the right applicants, but trial and error was the only way.

United Farm had two dams and I soon noticed several duck coming in of an evening, so I started feeding them at one dam, and, after a couple of years of learning, they started to produce good sport.

Our duck season lasted from November 1st to the end of February and, with the help of the local baker, Benny Lobel who supplied bread from his bakery (another shoot used potatoes) and feeding maize, we had a good showing of duck, including teal, whistler and several other species including knob nose, a large duck like a small goose.

The duck shoot developed, reaching just over 2000 wild duck a season from this one dam with a team of 6-8 guns. Through trial and error, we found that we could have a shoot every 17 days. We tried a 14-day interval, but it was just too close, a

21-day interval was longer, so my shoot days were booked on November 1st, 17th, Dec 4th, etc.

This shoot, like all the rest in Rhodesia at the time, was private and not syndicated, so we had a lot of reciprocation and I got invited to many other shoots. One memorable duck shoot was an early morning shoot with a low lying mist. We started at 5.30 am and the mist hung around until about 8 o'clock. Our bag was a record for us with 588 birds, followed by a very liquid breakfast. The duck could not be seen in the mist but you could hear them coming and had to snap-shoot as they passed over. It was a great morning.

Another special shoot on Robert Beattie's farm was a VIP do with the Prime Minister, Ian Smith and the President, Clifford Dupont attending. Robert placed me between the two VIPs with instructions to make sure they got plenty of birds. My gang of four young boys and I had the worst pick-up we'd ever had (as instructed by my host), but the two special guests were very happy.

We travelled far and wide for our shooting. One weekend we went to Plumtree into the tribal trust land. It was organised by Sir Hugh Beadle, the attorney general at the time. This shoot was different as we were standing in the water, seeking any cover available as there were no hides like we had at home. The cover I found was one lone dead tree with mud up to my knees; that was the time when I found out how important footwork is as I nearly fell a couple of times, but all was successful.

Being in the water, I placed my four young helpers north, south, east and west. They each had a piece of string and any duck that were picked up were tied together to float. I don't know how many rounds I took out with me, but I had two 100 cartridge bags and a 50 bag, plus my belt, which one of the helpers would fill up while I was shooting. As I left the water after a couple of hours, with what I thought were my last two rounds in the gun, five teal got up and I had a right and left. The right got two and the left got three and there were five duck dead in the air with my last two cartridges. The bag for that weekend was in excess of 500 duck. We shot Saturday afternoon and then again on Sunday morning, returning home on Sunday.

One duck shoot was scheduled for 2.30pm. Robert arrived at 2.15pm and he said that President Clifford Dupont was coming. I asked him how he knew as I hadn't told him the guest list. He said that he was parked down the drive with his chauffeur waiting for the correct time. Robert and I had the two best duck shoots and we always liaised with each other when setting dates so we never missed each other's shoots.

Another day we went to a duck shoot at Billy Munson's farm at Norton and ended up with 134 Egyptian geese and only five duck. I was boated out to an island where I got six rights and lefts at geese that day.

Besides the duck, we had a vast selection of dove shooting. When one of our shoot members found a good flight pattern over either ripening sunflower or sorghum crops, a shoot was organised for an afternoon. We had many of these, all followed by picnic sundowners when counting the bag.

One day we were chatting around the bottle and I said that it had not been a good day as I'd only had 35 birds. We went on to say that it was not a good day unless we'd had 50 plus doves; this shows how spoilt we were. The best dove excursion we had was when we went down to our old farm in Gwelo, a three-hour drive from Salisbury. A team of ten guns assembled. Each had the task of supplying something; the meat, pots and pans, mixers, beer, cooking basics, the cook, etc, and I was supplying the spirits. We were camping in an old farmhouse. So we had every 'mod con' except for furniture.

The schedule, which all the guns were given with their invitations, was typed out with full details, such as 'first shot, Saturday 2 pm', 'last shot, 5 pm' and 'evening at pleasure', etc.

'Breakfast on Sunday, 7.30 am' and 'first shot 8.30' etc. Well, during that three-hour afternoon, the bag picked up was 1040 doves with four of the guns each recording 170 plus each.

It was one of those days when something had to go wrong. I was using my Holland and Holland Royal and a piece at the end of the spring on the left lock broke, so I was unable to close the gun. I detached the lock – I don't remember what I used for a screwdriver – and out fell a tiny bit of the end of the spring that had fallen between the spring so that it could not be compressed. With this out and the lock reassembled, I was able to carry on shooting to achieve my 170 plus. I used the gun for years like this until it was sold. That evening we had a party and got to bed at 3.30 am.

When I woke up on the Sunday morning, still in my shooting clothes, I staggered to the dining room expecting to find it empty, but to my surprise the whole team was sitting down at 7.30 for breakfast, as in the posted schedule. I was very pleased with the discipline that we had as a team. That morning we decided at breakfast that we would try some drives. This suited me as I said that I would go with the beaters through the lands, driving a Land Rover.

The first drive had a lot of shots and when I approached the line of guns in the Land Rover (with my gun still in its case, so no shooting for me on that drive), there was Bill Gulliver who said that he had never before stood there telling the birds to go away as the shooting was not helping the hangovers that we all had.

All told, the drives were a great success as the bag was 650 doves for the morning. This meant the total for the two half-days was 1690 doves. All the birds were given to the local Africans as they attended all our shoots; no game was ever sold.

All this shooting, with our big bags, attracted some attention from do-gooders and there was an article in the Sunday Mail about all the duck we were killing, which came from the neighbouring national park. At that time we had a postgraduate doing his thesis on wild duck and he attended every shoot we had at United. His thesis had just been published and, basically, it was found that the duck shot at United were considerably heavier than the normal wild duck, so they were better able to breed at the end of our shooting season. One year, I estimated that our duck consumed about 100 tons of feed maize and bread, so they were very well fed.

For several years, my game book (lost on one of my many moves) had over 10000 birds per year, covering all the shoots that I'd attended, 2000 of which were duck shot on United. My personal tally during those years was plus or minus 2000 wild birds a year to my own gun.

I tried to interest my daughters in shooting and had the two eldest daughters at Holland Shooting School on one trip to the UK. This will show how little there is to being a good shot. Fiona was unable to hit anything until the coach told her to carry on with the swing, but to pull the trigger only when he said so. From then on, she was killing 90% just with his timing. I was amazed that the coach could do something like this. He made it look so easy, without even having the gun in his own hands. Unfortunately the girls did not take up shooting but became mad about horses instead – a much more expensive sport as I was to find out over the years that we owned horses in Rhodesia.

I was invited on a big game safari to Mozambique and, as I had no big rifle, I went out and bought a Rigby .416 from the gun dealer in Salisbury. We flew down with our host, a local vet, in his plane to Beira and were collected by the safari outfit, who drove us to their camp by the Pungwe River. There was a party of four rifles and we had a great few days going after buffalo, impala, reedbuck, etc. Then we had a day after elephant where I saw 13 people; the white hunter, the assistant African hunter, the four rifles of the party and seven bearers all in a single file line. I was not one of the rifles to shoot that day so, as I was the sixth rifle in the line, I handed my rifle to the bearer behind me as I knew that I would never get a shot. The party kept on walking and all 13 of us just walked up and shot two elephants that day.

I thought that, if this is big game shooting, then I would prefer to spend any time I have stalking red deer in Scotland, which is a much better sport. When I got back home, the first thing I did was to sell the Rigby back to the dealer who I'd got it from at the same price and I never wished to go after big game again.

The time in Africa working with the pedigree Brahmans was very interesting, as I had 13 trips to the States to buy cattle and two VIP trips to Malawi. I don't want to bore the reader with the details of it here, but maybe sometime later...

*****

# 3. Holidays out of Africa

During these years at United, while enjoying the great shooting just mentioned, I managed to make a yearly visit to the UK to do some fishing. Most years I met up with Norman Lindsay and we went to such places as Lochmaddy, Lochboisdale in Uist and many other places down the west coast. It was all good fun, with lots of malt tastings, but we never seemed to hit the weather quite right. As you know, your week is always the one after the good one; or the next week, after you have left, the conditions become perfect.

It was in Uist that I first discovered the muddler – a size 10, very long shank, golden body. Norman and I were out with a ghillie on a trout lock. The sea trout and salmon waters were as normal – not so good for that week. When the ghillie saw this particular fly, he scratched his head and tried to dissuade us from using it. Well, it worked that day and all that week on wild brown trout, and I have used a muddler on many occasions since. What I call 'muddle mutations' will be dealt with later, as I nearly always have one on for fishing today.

I had been trout fishing for 33 years before I caught my first salmon and that was in 1975 when I had an invitation to join a family on the River Dee at Banchory. I got a phone call from Joe Corrazza, who I had invited to several days' duck shooting earlier that year. He said that his father had the beat for four rods for a week and I was invited. The week started in 10 days' time so I made hurried plans, booked a ticket and was waiting in the hotel before the party arrived.

All I had was my sea trout rod, a 10'6" Hardy that my Uncle Sib had given me with the price ticket still on it (£10.17.6p), so he must have bought it before I was born. We had a good week and on the second day I was fishing at the Kate pool where we were all meeting for lunch. I was using a two fly cast with a butcher on top and a small stoat's tail tube with treble on the bottom. The stoat's tail caught the fish at the bottom of the run in and I was busy playing it while Joe waited to net it. Just then Louis and Kitty Corrazza arrived for lunch. Joe made a tennis-like shot with the net and missed the salmon, which was not quite ready. After another attempt or two, with shouted commands from me, which Joe ignored, the salmon was landed safely. Louis did say that the Royal Dee had never experienced such noise and pantomime to land a salmon.

Well, the week ended with a total of seven salmon for the four rods, but as Louis commented, "That bloody colonial had four of them!" I did not point out to him that I had caught all four in the same pool from the mark I had made when I caught the first fish.

That was my first and most important salmon fishing lesson; one has to find or know the best lies for different heights of water. It is advisable to have a knowledgeable ghillie who should know the water at all levels. It was just luck that I found this lie on my first attempt at proper salmon fishing. This lesson will repeat itself later on in Ireland.

Just a word about netting a fish. The net should not be waved in the air like a tennis racquet but placed in the water and held steady while the angler drags the played-out fish over the net which is then lifted up smartly. I have seen so many fish knocked off the line by the net. I have even done it myself, as netting a fish is an art that has to be practised.

Nowadays I do not net the trout when I am boat fishing as with so many flies on my cast it takes too long to untangle them and this wastes fishing time. I hand line all trout under 1.5lb straight into the boat, much to the horror of some of my partners. But it does work and avoids those tangles in the net. The handling of the net is the same for salmon, but when playing a salmon I like to give the fish a few gulps of air; this makes it more docile for netting. To give it air, simply hold its head just out of the water for as long as it takes.

My host, Louis was most kind and asked me to whom I would like to send salmon, so we sent one to my sister in Guildford and another to Uncle Sib in Dorchester by train. In those days, it would be delivered overnight. They both arrived safely and were much appreciated, especially by Uncle Sib who, the next time I saw him, asked what rod I had caught the fish on. When I told him it was the 10'6" Hardy, he said that I should have a proper salmon rod and he gave me his pride and joy, a 14 split cane Hardy with a hardy marquis reel.

The next year on my fishing holiday I took Joe to Mull and we stayed in a B&B in Salen village. We fished several lochs that I had fished while we were living at Glenforsa 25 years before. Mull, I found, was not the same; there was a two-hourly ferry taking 40 cars at a time. Previously, all we had had was the Lochinvar, which took only four cars each day. So you can imagine the increase in traffic and people this time. It did not help the peace, quiet and tranquility that had made Mull so pleasant back then.

That same year I went to Ireland and started going west from Dublin looking for some fishing. It was a bright tourist summer, hopeless for fishing. The further west I went, the better the fishing looked, but the bright weather was not helping. I found myself in a small village called Oughterard, west of Galway, and stayed the night in the Oughterard House Hotel.

The next morning, on leaving the hotel, I had a choice of turning left back to Dublin and England, where I could spend the sunny days visiting relations, or turning right to try and find some fishing. I looked up in the sky to see what the weather had in store and saw two small clouds, the first I had seen for several days, so I turned right and found myself fishing Screebe where I caught two sea trout that day. This was the start of my next 14 years of fishing in that area. How lucky it was for me that those two clouds showed up at that particular time.

That night I stayed at Maam Cross, a pub on the crossroads leading to Connemara, and I spent the following two weeks exploring the fishing. The management at Screebe made me very welcome with special rates that I could just afford, after I had explained the exchange control regulations that we had in Rhodesia. That was where I fished for many years. Screebe has its own system running into the sea, just north of Galway Bay, with a string of loughs, all with salmon and sea trout. The lowest lough was Screebe. This was the favourite for most anglers and it had three boats. Engines were not allowed so it could be hard work rowing in a good fishing wind. Nevertheless, it was worthwhile.

The next year I returned to Screebe and Norman joined me for 10 days. We fished hard and emptied several bottles of J and B whisky in the Screebe hut. It was these empty bottles in the hut in later years that told anglers I met at Screebe that I had returned for another fishing holiday. Norman and I were fishing away in a very low wind and after setting up the drift in a different place we arrived at the same spot near the shore each time and on the third time I had a rise and it was a salmon, which was duly netted.

Having got my first Irish salmon, we decided to have a party at the Maam Cross Hotel. We invited several people we had met and who had helped us with their fishing knowledge, etc. The party got out of hand and champagne was called for. After about eight bottles, we found out that this old vintage stuff we were drinking had been in stock for many years and was still priced at only £5.00 per bottle. It was lucky for us as both Norman and I were both short of spending money as we had Rhodesian exchange control, which only officially allowed us £100 per year for holidays. That was quite an expensive salmon and we learnt not to have any more Irish parties.

In those early days in Ireland I was using my 9' split cane Walker Brampton, but I was feeling it getting very heavy and my hand was burning with the weight of it. Carbon rods had recently come out but were pretty expensive and I decided that if I was to enjoy my fishing I needed to get a carbon fibre rod. But how to pay for it with limited holiday allowance was another problem. This was solved by trading in Uncle Sib's salmon rod that I had never got to grips with, so I got a Bruce and Walker 10 carbon rod which was so light compared to the other split canes that it transformed our fishing from hard, painful work to a pleasure. Even to this day, I still cannot use a double-hander and prefer a single-handed rod even for salmon fishing.

Again the loss of my fishing record means that I do not have all the details but I can remember some days in Ireland in the late 1970s while I was still taking holidays from Rhodesia. Each year we mostly stayed at Maam Cross but each year it was more of a struggle to get holiday spending money out of Rhodesia due to ever tighter exchange control regulations.

For example, during a one-month holiday, while staying in a trailer tent borrowed from my cousin Anna, I had 22 days' fishing with 122 sea trout and 13 salmon. The best day for sea trout was a very blustery day, with only myself at the oars and a catch of 22 fish. But I was so exhausted that I could not fish for the next two days.

Another day, I was in a gale. I fished the river where it entered Screebe alongside a stone pier. I could hardly stand up in the gale and I had to brace myself against the wind or I would have ended up in the water with the fish. I fished along the stone pier and soon found where the fresh salmon were lying. The wind was so strong that it was hard to keep the fly on the water and I missed a lot of eager fish as they tried to catch the fly several inches out of the water. This was very exciting but also frustrating at the time, but in the end I did get five nice ones. When I hooked a fish I had to take it down the pier away from the main lie so that it would not disturb the other salmon. I did not have a salmon net so I had to take the salmon around to a nice handy beach where they were successfully dispatched.

It was a good lesson that salmon like a gale and can be willing takers in the wildest conditions. Other days on that holiday were good, but those were the best two days' fishing I had had in my life.

These fishing visits to Screebe in Connemara, Ireland continued every year up to 1982. One year, without a car, I stayed in Screebe Lodge and got lifts to fishing sites each day. Another year, when I had four months' sick leave, I spent the whole season fishing Screebe and stayed in a mobile home in Oughterard. That year, with a friend, George Leonard, we had four salmon before breakfast, fishing off the bank just around from the hut, all from the same groin. And of course lots of sea trout.

In those days I was experimenting with different lengths of casts as extra-long casts of 12-18 feet were in vogue. I found that the longer a cast was the more difficult it was to keep tangles and wind knots away, so I soon reverted back to a standard 9 foot cast with 10lb maxima chameleon nylon, which is what I still use today in Caithness. That is 30 years plus of using the same type of nylon, but I do buy new reels of it each year. This is important as it does not keep for years and years.

*****

# 4. Douneish, Ireland 1983-1993

After 1980, when Rhodesia changed to Zimbabwe, we were not able to have duck shoots for political reasons. Holiday travel allowances further reduced. I sold out my share in R B Ranchers in 1983 and bought a small winery – about 20 acres, with 7 acres of vines under irrigation from boreholes – at Borrowable, north of Harare. This was not a great success as I was not interested in small scale intensive viniculture. This venture was sold and I decided to move to Ireland. My ex- wife and four daughters did not want to move so they stayed behind in Rhodesia.

I moved to Oughterard, western Ireland where I was to start a fly fishing school, which I called The Practical Fly Fishing School. I had researched other fishing schools by attending their courses and I found that they were trying to teach us to be champion casters. However, they were missing the idea that people might want to be practical fishermen, fishing simply to enjoy themselves. On the basis that only a small proportion of people have the ability to be a champion (championship also excludes me, as I am an average person), I set out to teach would-be fishermen and women how to get real enjoyment from fly fishing, hence the word 'Practical' in the school's name.

This I started doing myself and noticed that my hands or helpers, although they knew what to do, did not respond as willingly as my African staff had done back in Rhodesia. My hands just had to learn the hard way with bitter experience and practice, as I had learnt my shooting and fishing. It also had another disadvantage as it was situated down three fields and through four gates, and the road was for four-wheel drive vehicles as the cattle had churned up the gateways. But the access by boat was very easy; about five minutes from the neighbouring Baurisheen Peninsular. This is the route I used for a year or two until the road was improved.

At this time I met Brenda who came to fish and stayed in a guest house across the water. We got married in January 1986, so that year we opened the lodge to guests as Brenda was a very good cook and wooed all with her dinners and knife-and-fork picnics, even when the fishing was bad. Mostly our guests were from America. As we were a small concern with two letting bedrooms, we could not advertise a lot so we concentrated on the USA. The fishing lodge business built up until the advent of the Gulf War when the Americans stopped travelling and the only guests we had were repeat customers, with no new visitors at that time.

Looking back now, with my shooting career finished and left behind, as I had sold my guns to finance the Irish move (they were the only capital I could get out of Zimbabwe after 30 successful years of work), my fishing career left a lot to be desired. When I started teaching I realised that it was a lot harder than I had imagined and that I did not know as much as I thought I did. So the long learning curve really started again. The first thing I had to do was to break down all the movements of a cast into words that clients could understand.

It helped when I taught myself to fish with my left hand; this was the time that really showed me what I had to do as my right hand had been casting for 30 odd years. From this experience my lessons were developed, after I had somehow mastered fishing with my left hand. In fact, my teaching proved quite successful, especially with the ladies as most of the men wanted to put too much strength into their efforts; casting is all about timing and not strength.

Lough fishing in Ireland is the same type of fishing as fishing in the lochs of Scotland and it is difficult to adapt from river or still water fishing to the correct way of fishing here as it looks so different from a boat, but it is not. This is one of the most difficult things to explain to fly fishermen, including dry fly purists of which I was one, before taking up lough fishing. Remember fly fishing, at its best, is a visual sport and keen eyesight is necessary at all times.

In dry fly fishing one casts upstream and allows the floating fly to drift down towards you in the current, while you take in the slack line caused by the drift downstream, also raising the rod tip from 9 o'clock to 11 o'clock before repeating the cast. CARE SHOULD BE TAKEN NOT TO RETREIVE SO FAST THAT IT CAUSES THE FLY TO DRAG ACROSS THE WATER.

On seeing a rise, a quick strike is necessary and that means, if the fish has missed you or you have missed the fish, the fast strike now has the line up in the air so you have to continue as if it were a cast because you also want to immediately return the fly to that rising fish as it could take the fly if it had missed you the first time. Many trout have been caught on the second rise both in the river and the lough.

In lough fishing the situation is almost exactly the same. While the boat is drifting downwind you cast straight out from the boat, retrieving the slack line in the same way as a dry fly fisherman and raising the rod tip in the same way as dry fly fishing. A rise triggers a strike, just the same, and a missed fish requires an immediate return to it. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO FISHING VENUES IS THAT FROM A BOAT THE RETRIEVE HAS TO BE FASTER THAN THE RATE OF DRIFT, CAUSING FLY DISTURBANCE THAT ATTRACTS THE TROUT IN THE LOUGHS.

The fly drag on a river causes an unnatural disturbance that will frighten a trout, while the disturbance on a lough will attract the trout especially if you get your top dropper skating on the top of the water. An unimportant difference between the two types of fishing is that dry fly is usually only fished one fly at a time while lough fishing can have several flies on the cast at any time.

Having been a dry fly purist for 25 years, before taking up lough fishing, I know the two systems are the same as each other with only minor differences as described above. It is just hard to convince some people of the facts.

Lough fishing for wild trout is not the same as reservoir fishing, which I know nothing about as it is mostly 'put and take' and the fish are not wild, but this is unfortunately the only fishing available to many anglers. I can only hope that one day these anglers will be able to make the trip to either Ireland or Scotland for some real wild trout fishing. A note here; reservoirs are referred to as 'still waters' but lochs can in no way be described as still water as, when they are still with no wind, the wild trout angler might as well go home. We want our water to be anything but still; a good steady breeze of 10- 20 miles an hour is ideal. Many times, the wilder the better, as long as it is safe in the boat. Salmon fishing on a loch is best at its wildest.

BOAT SAFETY should be a priority at all times and a few basic rules must be observed. DO NOT STAND UP IN THE BOAT; cast sitting down, not standing up, and wear an automatic life jacket in preference to a buoyancy aid. If the weather is too strong for you, pull into the shore and wait. Use common sense when in the boat; be careful and safe.

Some of this is repeated in the lesson from the Practical Fly Fishing School that follows, but they are important points and are worth repeating.

It was during this time of teaching in Ireland that I started experimenting with different fly lines. I soon found that if I had a second, many of them were better than the top grade because the weight forward body was shorter than the requirements of a champion, thus they were classed as seconds. They were cheaper and allowed me to cut and join them to get the desired loading on my rods. The joins were not a success but were part of the experimenting. I found out what I required in the way of a line to load the rod fully at the end of a cast after fishing the dropper right close in; this was how the NIWF line was born but it was not produced until 2010.

In the lodge we had many guests and some brought their wives to learn. I remember one couple. It was their last day; we were fishing in front of Douneish when the lady turned to me and said, "Here, Roger, I'm tired, you have a go." So I got to fish. Within a few minutes I had caught a fish and the lady was no longer tired so she resumed fishing. Sometime later the lady was tired again, so she handed me the rod and within ten minutes or so I had another fish and the lady had recovered so she resumed fishing again. Half an hour later she handed me the rod again and you can guess what happened in another ten minutes or so; I had another trout. The husband was so upset that he downed his rod and declared that it was time to go home. I think that this is a prime example of fishing. It is not the long cast that catches the fish but the movement of the fly in the water. One has to work the fly as if it were on the tip of your finger and you were controlling its every movement. It must not simply be dragged along. I think that is why some anglers catch more than others; it is all in the control of the fly movement.

It was around this time that we tried the golden muddler again, but it was not working so well and a young ghillie put his sister's RED nail varnish on the gold, giving it a red body, and it suddenly started catching fish. It was from this little experiment that Roger's Red Muddler was born with a red wool body. This red muddler has been fished by me on the top dropper, all the time every season right up to the mayfly hatch, for the last 30 or so years. Note; it does not seem to attract trout during or after the mayfly, but I never fish without it for the early part of the season.

Loch Corrib had a good run of salmon and at the Galway weir bridge you could see into the river and watch anglers fishing below you. It was quite amazing, seeing a line of salmon stretching across the river all holding station like a line of soldiers on parade, while a salmon fisher cast a fly over them. As the fly came round with the current and approached within reach of the left hand salmon, this left hand fish dropped back a foot in the water to let the fly swing past. Each fish in the line did the same thing, dropping back and ignoring the fly before moving forward to take up its original position again. When I say they were ignoring the fly, this is not quite true; they saw it and moved out of the way but, as far as the angler was concerned, the fish were ignoring the fly. This bridge was a tourist sight, with as many as 20 spectators peering over from the bridge.

We rented a small lough on one of the rivers flowing into Corrib that had a fair supply of small brown trout which were good for the clients and also, after the first flood in June, it had a good run of salmon. The lough was very shallow and, while it held salmon waiting to go on upriver, the fish showed themselves freely, making for a very exciting day. Although you could see lots of them, they did not take well until the conditions were right, then we had fun and excitement.

As I said before, it had to be a wild day then salmon could be caught in 12" of water off the shore. The technique here was to have the angler in the back of the boat fishing downwind out of the stern, while I held the boat's nose to the wind, slowly moving the boat down the shore while he was fishing the fly very close to the water's edge. When a salmon took, I had to row the boat out to the middle of the lough so the fish could be played before netting. This was a successful method when the wind conditions were right. Another lie for the salmon was along the two reed beds and there you had to place your fly about two inches from the weed where a lot of salmon lay. This was fun and, on a take, the boat had to be rowed quickly out so the fish did not get tangled in the weeds.

A third and the best place for when the fish were moving upstream was where the river entered the lough. The entrance was hidden by weeds. This could be fished in any wind direction but I soon noticed that if the boat was allowed to drift over the lie, then the fish were put down and would not take. So, to rectify this, I placed several buoys around the small bay then selected the correct buoy for that wind direction, tied a rope onto it and, while fishing, slowly paid out the rope, letting the angler fish freshwater foot by foot. Our best day using this method resulted in 6 salmon before lunch in a howling gale, with many other days producing 2-4 fish.

This was another lesson; when you know of a salmon lie, they can be caught there when the weather conditions are right, but they can easily be disturbed so care is need not to let the boat go over them.

In my first year at Douneish I managed to do a deal whereby I ended up looking after a sea trout fishery, Inver More, for the season. So for four months I ran the Practical Fly Fishing School from a caravan parked at the fishery. I stayed in the caravan and had a great time with a whole season of sea trout fishing to hand. Due to my presence at the fishery, there was no poaching. Some of the loughs on this system were quite a walk and I was lucky enough to acquire a Honda three- wheeler ATV. Another learning curve was bogging down and jumping the bike over ditches. I was lucky I never came off but I did frighten myself a couple of times. This only lasted for the first season at Douneish as the next year we were taking guests in the lodge.

Connemara is renowned for its sea trout fishing and we took our guests at this time mostly to Costello fishery, which had the best reputation. We were the largest customers of this fishery for many years. No engines were allowed, so rowing was the order of the day. For this I had my own pair of oars which were very light as the fishery's oars were extremely heavy. My oars made the work so much easier. With sea trout fishing, the secret, I believe, is in the fly movement and it was often difficult to get clients to do this.

One day I was out with two dentists from North Carolina, a father and son-in-law, on the last day of their trip. I wanted them to catch some sea trout and was busy encouraging them to move the fly. When we went to the island for lunch we had eight nice sea trout in the boat. There were three other boats at the island at the time and the best that they had was two.

In one of the boats was the fishery manager and a fishing writer. We were knocking off at about 4 o'clock with 13 fish in the boat and the fishery manager came into harbour with his writer; they had only three fish and were going to another lough to see if they would have better luck. My clients were very happy that they had done so well, considering the efforts of the local fishermen that day.

The son-in-law did say to me that he had never heard anybody hassle his father like that before, but we had good results because I had reminded him all day to get his fly moving. Without this fly movement, our boat would not have achieved what it did.

To compound the problems of the Gulf War stopping new clients from travelling from the States, we also had a Fishing Strike to contend with. The reason being, the government introduced an annual fishing licence and the locals took up arms, so to speak, by boycotting the loughs and harassing those who had a licence to fish. We were driven off several times by six or seven boats picketing us on the water. On one occasion all my tyres were deflated while I was fishing our small salmon lough. Luckily I had a foot pump in the car so after some effort we were back on the road. I have carried a foot pump in the car ever since my tyres were let down on Screebe in 1978 by an unauthorised angler from the English Midlands. That time I was rescued by Paddy O'Flartey, the local water bailiff.

Also, by the end of the 1980s, the sea trout stocks had diminished due to sea lice from the salmon farms and we were very short of fishing to add to it all.

*****

# 5. to Glenforsa, Caithness

In 1993 we sold our lease on Douneish and moved to Windsor where we had a position as managers of Bishopsgate, a small estate adjacent to the royal park owned by the Jufalli family from Saudi Arabia. It had five gardeners and a full house staff so it was an interesting job for both Brenda and I. Mr Juffali senior passed away in 1995 and the sons wanted to change the set-up so we moved to Droitwich where we had a small apartment. From there we started a small catalogue clothing business but after a year our supplier went bust.

In 1996 we moved to Bridgnorth in Shropshire to be nearer to Brenda's elderly parents. The next ten years produced very little fishing, none of any consequence. In order to survive we had to work 24/7. Brenda was caring for her parents and I was starting up what is now our business today. So, having an enormous amount of flies (at least 10000 plus) in the attic that I had got out of Zimbabwe for the Practical Fly Fishing School at Douneish, we decided that I had to sell them. An easy decision, but how? I decided that the internet was the way to go. Another easy decision. But I could not even type or use the computer, so the hardest part was learning the ins and outs of the computer. This was mastered after a fashion and I started selling on eBay with some success. In 2001, when the flies were nearly all sold, we looked around for something so that we could carry on selling. Buying more flies to resell was not an attractive proposition as, by that time, the competition on eBay was very fierce, as it still is today. Ebay is a buyers' market now for many items due to its growth and its abundance of sellers.

After some time we decided to sell paper as this was easily posted, and we purchased some old punch magazines from the mid to late 1800s. They went quite well, selling page by page, but the humour was Victorian and not always appreciated in 2001.

We had to find other products and started selling pages from the illustrated London News and old Victorian illustrated books with many different interests under the label 'Old- Print.com'. The competition for these old antique prints was and still is building up today, making the market more and more difficult. We have been able to survive as we devoted all our time to developing and building up a large inventory so that buyers could find what they were looking for. We were running out of space in Bridgnorth and had to erect a large wooden shed to accommodate the increasing stock. Soon this was not big enough so we had to build another and then another; we ended up with five sheds in our garden and no more room for expansion.

In about 2002 Brenda and my daughter, Susan introduced me to winemaking as they found a homebrew wine kit when out shopping together. I am still making wine today and must be on around the 5000th bottle! It sounds a lot but we have not bought any wine since I started making wine from the kits. We are not allowed to sell this wine but we have several bartering deals going on with friends for fish and venison. And all our guests seem to enjoy it too (greatly).

In 2006 a decision was made to move as we had outgrown our two-bedroomed bungalow and five wooden sheds. We searched high and low on the internet but could not get what we wanted nearby for our budget, so we looked to see what the choices were. We soon found that, to get what was required on our budget, we would have to go as far north as possible where property was cheaper. So we decided to have a holiday, the first one since leaving Ireland thirteen years before.

Of course we had to do some fishing on the holiday so, after more research, we planned on a three-week holiday starting on May 1st. Our first stop was Lairg where we had booked a five star holiday cottage for two weeks with the aim of fishing Loch Shinn. There we met Charlie MacNeil who showed us the local fishing. It was bitterly cold with snow on the tops but we managed to catch a few trout. On several off days we toured the county for a house within our budget with enough room for the business of Old-Print.com Ltd, which had now been promoted to a limited company and was expanding fast. After two weeks at Lairg we moved to a holiday cottage at Dorrey outside Halkirk and fished Loch Calder with great success. One day Brenda and I had 19 trout caught on Roger's Red Muddler and the Blue Brenda. We still toured the area and we found the house that we eventually bought in Sinclair Lane, Halkirk. This house had four bedrooms, an integrated, double-plus sized garage and a very large 75 foot loft space. Having looked at 20 or so houses, at last we had found one within our budget and in a good fishing area.

After much work with solicitors and estate agents, we sold our Bridgnorth house and moved into Glenforsa in Caithness on July 25th, 2006, just ten weeks after the day we first saw it.

Old-Print.com was closed online from July 1st and we had planned to reopen on August 24th, giving us one month to get Glenforsa sorted out and ready for business. During August I had no time to fish as we were busy getting ready for the opening on the 24th, which we successfully achieved. So in September I had a few days off fishing Loch Calder which is only three miles from our door, so it was easy to go out for a couple of hours or so.

In 2007 I had the whole season of a new area to fish in front of me, but I still had to work as Old-Print.com still needed attention. We had recruited Margo, who came in five mornings a week; six years later, she is now our right hand. So Brenda could manage with this extra help while I went fishing. I had 74 days' fishing, all on Loch Calder. The season produced a total bag of 382 trout of 10" or better. As I was short of time, I cut many days on the water short if the fish were not cooperating and kept an hourly log of the time spent fishing. The total time on the water for the 74 days was 263.5 hours, with an average of 3.7 hours a day and a total of 1.45 trout per hour fishing. I found this amazing and after so many years of fishing around the UK and Ireland I declared Caithness to be the best I had found.

The main flies were, of course, for the early season, Roger's Red Muddler and then my three Irish mayfly patterns – yellow deer hair for the live mayfly, grey deer hair for the spent mayfly and the bibio muddler long shank for the hatching nymph. Then, after the mayfly, a selection of sedges and of course the daddy-long-legs preferably tied as a muddler daddy.

The weather in 2007 was favourable for fishing, helping me to achieve this good result. Also I was fishing one loch so I had a chance to learn the water in its different seasons. The loch is some two miles long and about three quarters of a mile wide so it is a big bit of water and it is not over-fished as it only has six boats on it, of which two belong to the Dounreay Fly Fishing Association, which is the local angling club that both Brenda and I are members of. The DFFA has some 16 boats on nine different lochs, so there is plenty of fishing available for its members; its primary loch is Watten, which has seven boats on it.

2008 was not quite as good with its weather and the bag was 304 trout for 78 days' fishing for a total of 242 hours on the water, giving an average of 1.25 wild trout per hour of fishing.

The same flies predominated as the year before. It was during this year that I met several partners who still fish with me today. One was Jim Linton who introduced me to a cast of five flies as I had only been using a three fly team up to that time.

Now the five fly cast is the everyday standard for my boat. The trick here is to tie the top dropper onto the braid where the nylon is tied to the line; it is not lengthening the cast. The other trick is to put droppers about two feet apart. This makes a total length of only eight feet, which is today's standard as we have seen that wild trout are not gut or line shy when they take that top dropper on the braid, which is the fly that takes the majority of the trout every day. The other four flies are a help in trying to find a fly that is on the trout's menu for that day. The top dropper for me on the braid, depending on the season, would be Roger's Red Muddler at the start of the season, the bibio muddler for the mayfly, a sedge pattern in late July or August, which is the slowest time in Caithness, and the daddy muddler for September.

The other good tip I picked up from Jim was using a chair in the boat. He used an old plastic conference chair and it made boat fishing very comfortable, as now you did not have to sit on a wooden seat twisted round to face the direction of the drift, but you could sit broadside facing the correct direction.

This extra comfort pays dividends as one is not so tired due to the added comfort; this means your reactions are that much quicker.

From the day I met Jim I have used these two tips; the bob fly on the braid and the chair. I can honestly say that they have helped considerably with our catches. There are boat fishing chairs that you can buy for around £100 but they are not as light or as easy to carry as the conference chair, bought second hand or new for £20.00. The difference a chair makes has to be tried to be believed; it is well worth while.

2009 was another season of work with only 63 days' fishing and a total catch of 313 wild trout, but we did find another couple of lochs that were to play a part in future days out.

2010 was another season of work with again only 63 days' fishing but the weather was a bit warmer for the mayfly so we had some better days. Fishing some six lochs we had a total catch of 521 fish. Calder and Seilge produced nearly 200 trout each.

So the little work of exploring and finding new lochs to fish during the 2009 season paid off for 2010. When you find a good loch stay with it, but also keep searching for something better. This applies certainly to Caithness and Sutherland as there are thousands of lochs waiting to be fished.

Many of the local anglers seem to prefer Loch Watten because it has a reputation for large fish. I have fished it several times but maybe it does not suit my style of fishing because I found it to be rather dour so I only fish it rarely now.

One day while fishing Seilge with my grandson, Zain, I went overboard. This is how it happened. We were in an aluminum boat, which is not as stable as the Loch Lomond boats of the Association, and while moving position the lazy way with our line trailing out behind, the wind got up a bit more and a wave took the oar out of the rowlock. Zain, who was on the outboard, made a grab for the oar, the boat tilted and my chair that I was sitting on went overboard into the loch.

I was still holding the rod with its line trailing so I handed the rod to Zain and grabbed the gunnel of the boat. I told Zain to start the engine and head for the lee shore. We had not gone a few yards when the outboard stopped with the line around the propeller! What to do now? Zain was unable to get the line out of the prop so all we could do was to drift to the shore. Twenty minutes later we arrived on a rocky shore. I found it very hard to stand up after twenty minutes in the water and with the boat having been bouncing on the rocks in the wind. I got out of the water and then felt very cold. It was the first week of July so the water really was quite warm. I hate to think what would have happened in April.

Yes, I was wearing an Airflo Wavehopper automatic waistcoat that inflated after I went in, so there was no fear of drowning as I held onto the boat for the twenty minutes' drift.

I was lucky but what I learnt that day is to always wear a lifejacket. Get out of the water as soon as possible. The boat should have a painter (bow rope) as this is much easier to hold onto than a gunnel. If you lose something overboard, DO NOT LEAN OVER to try to grab it. You can easily take the boat round in a circle to fetch it. Stow your line between drifts so it does not catch the propeller.

2011, with its cold dull weather and mostly northerly winds, was not a perfect season for the fly fisherman. The early part of the season looked promising but by mid-May the weather had returned to March levels and this resulted in retarding the fly life for the rest of the season.

But with hard work and perseverance, we managed 100 days' fishing with a catch of 800 trout. I realise that we did not fish Loch Calder as much as we should have done as we had only 40 days with 99 trout, as for some reason (the cold weather) it was not fishing well and the mayfly was nearly absent. However, we were exploring more new lochs.

Exploring new lochs is fun but can be very time-consuming, as very few lochs will hold good trout all over. Time has to be spent fishing water that is maybe not so productive and trying to find the patches that hold the most trout. When you find the hot spots they have to be remembered and navigation marks should be noted to each shore so that you can return to the patches again.

The year 2011 was a very poor mayfly season, which never seemed to get off to a start but dribbled along for a fair time, producing tantalisingly small hatches in the cold weather. And there was hardly a daddy-long-legs to be seen the whole season. In other good years I have seen the daddy out during the mayfly season and have caught many trout with the daddy while fishing the mayfly. With the lack of the daddy and fly life in general, September 2011 was one of the worst Septembers I have seen.

2012 started very cold and did not even warm up as 2011 had done for April and the first half of May. So, weather-wise, it was very disappointing for the fly fisherman. The same comments should be applied to last year's weather. I noted that every day, even in the summer (what summer?), I went out wearing a scarf.

In 2012 I had now reduced my working hours to about 14 hours a week, so I managed to get 111 days out on the water. The total catch was an impressive 1384 trout of 10" or better with a magnificent trout of 6lb 2oz being the heaviest trout of my career. This big trout took a size 12 bibio muddler while on a drift on Loch Calder in some wild weather. There was a patchy mayfly hatch that day in mid-July, which seemed to stir up the big fellows, as the next day Gordon caught his 2.5lb trout.

Well, I must tell you about Gordon. He started fly fishing in July 2011 when some of his friends encouraged him. I only met him in mid-April 2012 when we were both going out by ourselves on Loch Calder.

I suggested that he join me, so we shared the boat. We talked about the different fishing methods that were used for today's loch fishing and, as my methods were catching more than the methods that he had picked up from his friends, he started copying my techniques.

The next day he arrived to join me again and he had made up his cast exactly the same as my five fly cast and he tried to mimic my methods. I must say that Gordon is the fastest learner of fly fishing that I have seen, and I have been encouraging friends and clients to adopt my techniques for the last 40 years.

So much so that, within a month, he was catching more than his share in the boat. That is saying a lot for somebody who only started fly fishing less than a year ago. At the end of Gordon's first full season of fishing in Caithness, he had a total of 180 fish to his rod. A very creditable effort for his first year of fly fishing. Watch out for him as I expect to learn from him in 2013!

By the time the season had ended on October 6th, the weather had still not improved to produce any worthwhile fly life and still no daddies except for one day as follows. Four of us were going out on Calder in two boats; Alistair and Gordon in one and Kenny and myself in the other. Kenny and I were first out of harbour and we went to the lake shore stretch and fished away there until we saw the other boat head up to the north end. This was what I had been waiting for, as I had wanted to go into the new bay area from the start but, there, the water is full of weeds and the fishable water is restricted. I did not want two boats there to disturb the patches that we would be fishing very carefully.

Kenny and I were both fishing daddies on the braid and four other flies when we went into the bay with the three fish we had caught on the farm shore. We did not have any idea of the sport to follow. After a hectic few hours we had 22 trout in the boat all on the daddy and all way above the average weight for Calder.

We were back in the harbour by four o'clock waiting for the other two, who eventually arrived after fishing some of our other favourite patches while we watched. They arrived with seven trout for the day and were surprised with our catch as they had not been fishing a daddy, nor had they thought of the new bay area as they were put off by the weedy conditions. This shows that you have to be in the right place at the right time, with the right flies, fished the right way, and with the right line. Knowledge that has been accumulated over 70 years of fly fishing, and then just add some luck! This is needed as well.

With the help of my friends we ended the season of 111 days with this, the best year so far, despite the poor weather conditions and lack of fly life. See table below:

Year Days fished No. lochs Fish Special

2006 ? 1 ?

2007 74 2 382

2008 78 4 304

2009 63 7 313

2010 63 6 521

2011 100 13 800

2012 111 10 1384 6.2oz

My cousin Anna had lent me her Argocat for the summer and this enabled us to get to more distant lochs more easily and more often. These distant lochs can be reached by Argocat if you book with the keeper of the estate, but the keepers, being very busy, cannot always accommodate you so having your own is an advantage.

# 6. Wild trout management and competitions

There are many lochs around here that have a reputation for averaging 1lb trout. I have failed to find them as this average was in the good old days of the Victorians and the Edwardians who had the time and the energy to fish these lochs, which are mostly the ones that are harder to get to today. In those far-off days the sportsmen had access to ponies and ghillies, which made their outings much easier. Also they did not have the modern day's pressures and could spend more time at their sport. So they were able to crop these lochs each year, taking a fair amount of fish, thus keeping the lochs from becoming overstocked which is what happens when they are not fished hard enough. Catch and release fishermen are, in my opinion, damaging the quality of these highland lochs by releasing what they catch and not cropping the loch, which, like any other natural asset, has to be managed (and that includes an annual crop depending on its particular conditions). If this had been done over the last 50 or so years, these famous lochs, with high reputations, would still be being fished like they were 100 years ago. A reasonable example of this is Watten, which still gives great sport, although I think it is being overfished today as it certainly is not what it was 50 years ago, by all accounts.

I have fished two different lochs of previously high reputation and met with two different management systems. One was to return all trout caught so as to maintain a high stock of very small trout (that is what we caught that day without seeing any fish of 10" or better); this method, in my opinion, has led to disaster. We will not be returning there – to one of Scotland's most beautiful and scenic lochs – as the fish quality is very much substandard and can only get worse with this short- sighted style of management.

wild trout managemnt and competitons

The other loch, where the management advises killing all fish caught, shows great potential of recovering its famous reputation. Fifty per cent of the fish we catch there are 10" or over and the best last season was over 1lb. A few more years of this kind of management will return this loch to its former reputation. Both these lochs are off the beaten track and require a long hike or an Argocat ride.

All I can say, in general, is that the catch and release policy is only viable in overfished waters (or stocked waters) and a disaster in the under-fished natural waters of the Scottish Highlands where the majority of the last of Britain's wild brown trout are found and need to be carefully managed.

Our club, the Dounreay Fly Fishing Association, has a strong competition section with many competition days per year.

I am not keen on competitions and do not enter them, but their rules suggest a minimum size of fish of 10", so that is the size that we go by in our boat. Anything smaller is returned except if we have been directed to kill all for good management reasons.

Recent development of the tackle used today has been widely influenced by competitions and by champion casters who now advise the tackle manufacturers to make tackle that suits their style and purpose of fly fishing. Unfortunately the tackle required for this competition, and for champion style, is not really suitable for sporting fly fishing, which has not changed in the last century. In the old days the split cane rod reigned supreme for nearly a century. It was a joy to fish with its soft smooth action that required no effort in the actual cast. The real drawback was its weight; just holding the rod was a feat of strength and that led to the downfall of a perfect fly fishing tool when the carbon fibre rod came on the scene.

The present day designers seem to have forgotten the sporting fly fisher when it comes to fishing. Remember that casting is only to get the line out onto the water BEFORE you start fishing. The modern day tackle has certainly been improved, if one could only find the right combinations of rod and line which are not always the manufacturer's choice as the manufacturer has been guided by these casting champions.

The style of fishing I have adopted is as old as the hills. I learnt it 70 years ago from a fisherman who had learnt it seventy years before. The only difference is that we now have lighter rods and a better line, which has replaced the old silk line that I started fishing with. What is needed is the careful selection of rod and line to give you that old-fashioned split cane action that lasted for 100 years or more.

But the actual style of fly fishing for wild trout is still the same, with the same techniques, but with a vastly greater selection of flies.

# 7. NIWF fly fishing lesson

NIWF stands for NEW IMPROVED WEIGHT FORWARD.

This fishing line has taken over 25 years of development by Roger Beale, who has been fly fishing for 70 years, to give effortless casting, doing away with many FALSE CASTS which can snag behind you, lead to wind knots or spooked fish.

The NIWF line is perfect for all practical anglers who will profit from all the benefits of this new line and see a huge improvement in their fly casting ability and their fish catches. The NIWF will not beat the distance of a champion caster who uses a WF or DT line with several false casts each time. The NIWF is designed for actual fishing, which is what the majority of us like to do.

When you pick up your line off the water your rod is already fully loaded with a short line. No false casting is needed to load the rod further so one cast is all that is required to deliver your fly right to the fish. The disturbance caused by picking up a long line off the water is quite considerable and should of course be avoided if possible, and so the NIWF line has been developed to provide a full AFTM (Association of Fishing Tackle Manufacturers) load to your rod even when you cast a short line.

No false casting means:

More Fishing Time

More enjoyment

No spooked fish

No snags behind as you only have a short line behind

No extra chance of wind knots caused by unnecessary casting

No fatigue caused by wasted energy.

All this means more chances to catch fish!

The NIWF line will not make you a champion caster, but how many of us want to be champion casters? But it will greatly add to your fishing time and enjoyment. Nature allows only a select few to be champion casters. Note that Olympic gold medalists and champion fly casters are far above the practical standard and are few and far between on riverbanks. Some of us can naturally cast more easily than others but not catch as many fish. Champion casters are not necessarily successful fishermen.

Fly fishing is composed of three parts:

STARTING, CASTING and FISHING.

The first two parts have to be made as easy as possible. The third is really up to the fish!

Here are the simple movements (for a right-hander) put into words that I hope everyone will understand. The "trigger finger" is the index finger.

STARTING TIP

How do you START with no LOAD on your rod? Having observed many fishers start a cast with no hassle I have called it the BIG STRETCH.

BIG STRETCH, STEP 1

With the fly attached to the rod by the fly holding ring near the handle, pull the line with your left hand through your trigger finger thus bending the rod.

BIG STRETCH, STEP 2

Still holding the rod bent with your trigger finger tight, check that the line is clear and not tangled around the rod. If the line is tangled around the rod, flick the tip of the rod in the required direction and the line will clear the rod. (If you are fishing with dropper flies on the line and a dropper is caught on one of the rings, then smartly release your trigger finger allowing the rod to snap straight thus causing the offending dropper to jump loose. Then repeat Step 1.)

BIG STRETCH, STEP 3

Still holding the cleared rod bent with the line held by your trigger finger, pull 12 feet of line off the reel with your left hand. When all is clear, unhook the fly from the keeper ring while keeping the rod bent. Then slowly straighten your arms out at right angles to your body at the same time as letting the stripped line slowly slip through your trigger finger. When you have both arms out at full stretch, horizontal to the ground, you will have pulled approximately 6 feet of line out the top of the rod. Now you have something to load the rod. Without

A) asking someone to pull the line out of the top of your rod as sometimes you do not have a willing partner to help you.

B) jiggling the rod tip in the water to get the line out so you can start, as this can scare fish that often hide within a couple of feet of the bank.

BIG STRETCH, STEP 4

Now your rod is loaded with 6 feet of line, do an overhead or roll cast shooting out the rest of the line that you took off the reel at beginning of Step 3. You are now comfortably fishing a short line to start. Do not try to start fishing a long line to begin with as I have seen many fish caught very near the bank or boat when starting. Just give those fish a chance first with a short line.

BIG STRETCH, STEP 5

Now, with your short line out fishing, gradually take more line off your reel and increase your distance with each cast covering extended water until you reach the fishing distance that you are comfortable with.

Note; you have not used a false cast because the weight and design of the NIWF line has done all the work for you.

Note; dry fly fishermen will say they have to false cast to dry the fly. This is not necessary with the many new floatants available today. Occasionally a false cast can be necessary, but certainly not every time. The solution for dry fly fishermen? Change your floatant and use a NIWF line thus reducing 90%+ of your false casts.

CASTING

INSTANT POWER is the secret of great fly casting. It is when you flex the rod tip backwards without any movement of the rod butt. (To get the feel of this power, try shaking your rod without moving your hand. It so simple it is hard to believe. Just use your trigger finger (index finger) to sharply pull back (a jerk) and your thumb, which is along the top of the rod handle pointing up the rod, to jab forward. The sharper the pull and the jab the more movement you will get in your rod tip. Try this and you will be amazed at the power and speed of the rod tip. But remember to keep the hand, arm and wrist STILL with no movement. The hand is just the pivotal extension to the rod. If the hand arm or wrist moves it will reduce the power in the rod tip.

I have found that with a practical fishing approach (as opposed to a championship style) the less movement a rod has the more power it can deliver to shoot the fly line towards the fish, ALL WITH LESS ENERGY.

We use the clock method to describe this action, where 12 is the sky and 6 is the ground (described for right-handers).

1) We start when we have finished our cast and shot the line out to the fish. THE ROD will NOW be at 9 o'clock.

2) From 9 o'clock to 11 o'clock is fishing time (described in the next section).

3) When your rod is at 11o'clock you will have a short line out with only your leader on the water. This short line will help to not spook the fish at lift off. (That is when you lift your line and fly off the water after fishing the cast out). Now LIFT OFF applying instant power to the rod.

Note here that the champion casters have this simple movement hidden in the many movements that they do. All this extra movement is impossible for the majority of fishermen to time correctly or copy, so try this simple NIWF style with the NIWF line for more enjoyable fishing.

By applying instant power at 11 o'clock going backwards, your line will be going UPWARDS and back. The instant power stops by 12 o'clock. Thus your line cannot catch your rod or your head, since the line is going UP and back above your rod tip and head which means no tangles.

At 12 o'clock follow through to 1 o'clock where you STOP - repeat STOP - and wait a fraction to let the line go out behind you and straighten out, thus bending the rod tip backwards. This BEND of rod backwards LOADS the rod for your forward cast so this is very important. Note; a good back cast is required to load the rod for the forward cast so in many respects the back cast is MORE important than the forward.

With the rod loaded at 1 o'clock, apply instant power with a jab of your thumb. This power will be off again by 12 o'clock so your line will be going UPWARDS and forwards, thus well above your head and rod tip, which again means no tangles.

At 11 o'clock stop the rod and shoot the line that you have fished on the previous fishing cast. To do this, release your trigger finger, which has been retaining the line during the cast. After shooting the line, follow the line down to 9 o'clock to start fishing. (Some more advanced fishermen will be controlling the line with their left hand, not their trigger finger, but the same principles apply.)

FISHING TIME for various disciplines

Now we have completed a full cast, the rod is at 9 o'clock.

DRY FLY FISHING

Having cast upstream let the fly float down towards you on the current. Be careful not to drag the fly in the water (a sure way to scare off or put down feeding fish). To control your line, strip in, that is, slowly at the rate of the current, take up any slack line with your left hand through your trigger finger. Continue to take up line with your left hand, at the same time slowly raising your rod from 9 o'clock to 11 o'clock. This is all necessary to keep contact with your fly without causing it to drag and also to be ready to strike any rise (which you cannot do on a slack line). The higher the rod the faster the strike, thus resulting in more fish landed.

The speed of this line takes up between 9 and 11 o'clock depending on the speed of the current. Dry fly fishing depends on a free floating fly with no drags and a fast strike at a rise. So adjust accordingly until you are now backing at 11 o'clock with a short line to lift off to start your next cast with instant power.

Downstream fishing

Cast across the stream (often at 45 degrees or it can sometimes be nearly straight across). Let the fly come round in the current, with your rod still at 9 o'clock, then as the line is straightening out below at the side of the stream you can shorten your line by pulling line with your left hand through your trigger finger and slowly raising the rod up to 11 o'clock. (Many fish are caught on this upstream retrieve just before the start of another cast.) The rod is now at 11 o'clock with a short line ready for lift off for your back cast.

Still water fishing

Cast downwind, if you can, or across wind. Your rod is now at 9 o'clock and your fly is now stationary in the water. Sometimes fish will take a stationary fly, or a fly as it lands, but they are more attracted to movement. So start stripping in line with your left hand through your trigger finger. The speed of the retrieve from very slow to very fast depends on the conditions of the day; wind, time, feeding habits, etc. At the same time slowly raise the rod from 9 o'clock to 11 o'clock. When the rod is at 11 o'clock you will have a short line out ready to start your next cast (many fish are caught close to the bank as they often follow in for a long way).

Boat fishing, drifting boat or loch style

Having cast out your rod it is now at 9 o'clock, and the boat is drifting downwind onto the fly creating slack line (which is no good to strike a fish and your line can even go under the boat!), so retrieve the line with your left hand through the trigger finger. Speed depends on the drift speed and the speed with which you wish to move the fly through the water. I believe movement is the important factor here but speed just depends on the fish that day. (I have seen a slow retrieving fisher catch more than a fast retrieving angler and vice versa.) While retrieving the line, raise the rod from 9 o'clock to 11 o'clock. At 11 o'clock your top dropper should be just on the surface (so you have a very short line.) It is important to slowly brush the water with your top dropper before casting again, to shoot as much line out as you have retrieved.

I have seen many trout caught by dabbling the dropper just before casting. Some days it will account for 80% of the catch so it is worth perfecting.

To sum up:

You must have noticed by now that, for every different fishing situation, the casting style is the same, with the same important features to remember.

1. 11 o'clock Instant Power and Upward back cast with instant power.

2. Follow through from instant power application, 11 o'clock to 1 o'clock.

3. STOP at 1 o'clock to load the rod for forward cast.

4. Instant Power at 1 o'clock, Upwards and forwards.

5. Pause at 11 to shoot the line.

6. Follow through to 9 o'clock to gently present the fly.

7. Fishing Time IS from 9 o'clock to 11 o'clock. DO NOT WASTE IT.

To STRIKE a RISE is to apply instant power and if you miss the fish you are already in your next cast. In my opinion you cannot strike fast enough. So, for the best results, the rod tip should already be moving upwards from 9 o'clock to 11 o'clock as described in the FISHING TIME above.

At the end of fishing, this is how to catch your fly the easy way:

I have seen all sorts of gymnastics when fishers try to catch their fly. First, the simple principle is; THE FLY BLOWS DOWNWIND and cannot go in any other direction.

So, at the end of fishing, wind in the line until the join of the leader and line is at eye level.

Note that the line is blowing downwind from the tip of the rod. With this fact in mind, if you hold the rod at 12 o'clock and slowly move the tip of the rod into the wind while lifting the reel in the direction of the fly, the fly will come to the reel without you chasing it all over the place. The fly will come straight to your hand with no chasing.

Note that in strong winds this lowering of the rod tip into the wind with the reel going up towards the fly can get the rod nearly horizontal before you catch the fly.

LEADERS BREAKING in FISH

How many times have you heard this saying? "I had just started fishing and on my second or third cast I hooked a big fish and he broke me."

This is because the fisher was using yesterday's leader (or last month's or sometimes last year's).

You should tie a new leader every day as the knots you put in yesterday have flexed and crystallised overnight, thus becoming weaker. I have carried out rough tests and if you have 10lb leader material and you tie a knot then your breaking strain is only 5lb after a day's fishing and a night's rest. So, to avoid having to say the above statement to your friends, ALWAYS TIE A NEW LEADER EACH MORNING BEFORE YOU START FISHING.

WHAT A FISH FEELS WHEN HOOKED

If the fisher holds the rod at 12'oclock while playing a fish, the fish feels very little pull, only ounces. If you drop the rod to, say, 10 o'clock then the fish feels pounds and can easily break you. Try it yourself with a partner being the fish. And then change positions. You will be really surprised as it is not what you would expect. But, when holding the fly, hold the barb flat between your thumb and finger, then if it slips it will not penetrate your finger or thumb.

Safety

While fishing please be careful and take safety precautions. Always cast with an up and over method, then your line will always be above the rod tip even when it is at any angle to the water, so it cannot entangle any part of you or your clothes. If in doubt, use glasses to protect your eyes. Always wear a life jacket when wading or when in a boat. Always hold the fly with the barb flat between your thumb and finger. Always check behind you for other fishers or spectators so you do not hook them on your back cast.

End of lesson. Tight lines to all.

# 8. Helpful links

Below are some useful links to help you plan that next visit to Caithness and Sutherland for your Wild Trout trip of a lifetime.

Links below: niwf.com www.niwf.com/Cached

You +1'd this publicly. Undo

New Improved Fly Casting weight forward fishing line

DFFA Index

www.dffa.co.uk/

DOUNREAY FLY FISHING ASSOCIATION (DFFA) OWNS

17 FIBRE GLASS BOATS FOR THE USE OF THEIR CLUB MEMBERS...

Achentoul - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achentoul

The Achentoul Estate boasts several lochs, including Loch Ascaig, Loch Arachlinie, Loch Badanloch, Loch Ruthair, Loch Drum, Loch Lucy, Loch Cullidh...

Hugo Ross, Fishing Tackle Specialists www.hugoross.co.uk/ Hugo Ross is the North of Scotland's premier Tackle Specialist. Situated in the town of Wick.

Harpers Fly Fishing Services Thurso, Fishing Tackle

www.mister what.co.uk/.../402887-harpers-fly-fishing- services-

Harpers Fly Fishing Services in Thurso.

Bighouse Lodge and Estate www.bighouseestate.com/ Built in 1765 and a former home of the Chieftains of the

Bighouse and Sandwood Chieftains of the Clan Mackay.

Welcome to the Forsinard Hotel

theforsinard.co.uk/

The Forsinard Hotel is one of northern Scotland's premier game and fishing hotels.

Caithness CWS - Fishing - Lochs in Caithness - Index

w w w.caithness.org/fishing/lochs in caithness/inde x.

Local tackle shops can give details of most lochs in the county. Permits ... Permits from Dounreay Fly Fishing Association and Harpers Fishing Shop, Thurso.

Lochs, Sutherland - Fish Directory - SpinFish

wheretofish.spinfish.co.uk/.../wtfwildbtlochssutherland. html Sutherland. For the angler who loves fly fishing in wild places for wild untamed trout, Sutherland offers fantastic opportunities.

Halkirk Holiday cottage http://www.holiday-cottage-halkirk. yolasite.com/

# 9. Tight Lines

I hope that the foregoing pages will help you to enjoy your wild trout fishing as much as I have done. That is the aim of this book.

Use the links in the previous chapter to help plan your wild trout fishing holiday in Caithness and Sutherland. I promise that once you have done it once, you will want to return again and again.

As you can see from the catch chart, we have been improving year by year as we have learnt the area. It is all about learning and remembering the conditions for hot spots, etc.

So get started and head north to Caithness and Sutherland for next season.

Just remember the tips and tricks in the lesson; keep the fly moving and, for ease of casting, use one of the NIWF lines.

Tight lines

Roger

# ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in Essex, educated at Ampleforth College, Yorkshire, brought up at Glenforsa, Isle of Mull, went to Rhodesia cattle ranching until 1984.

Then started the Practical Fly Fishing School in Connemara, Ireland.

Later started Old-Print.com Limited with Brenda as their retirement fund. Now at Glenforsa, Halkirk, Caithness where the wild trout fishing is the best he has had in 70 years of fly fishing.

www.born-to-fish.co.uk and www.old-print.com.
