Autumn in Scotland is when you’ll see the biggest fish of the year caught. Big male salmon, affectionately known as ‘Croc’s,’ become very aggressive just before spawning, giving the angler a rare chance to hook into some of the year’s biggest fish. Join Lana Richardson and Colin Macleod as they search in 3 of Scotland’s finest rivers for big Salmon.
Something that a great old-timer, a very singular man to whom I dedicated something that I did some 30 years ago, said to me when I was 19 and he not only a still very successful salmon-fisher but a gent still with an eye for ladies. It would have been in very early October one year in the 1970s, when the Welsh salmon river that he and I had fished very hard all season long was about to close for the winter, as, whilst there were still a few fresh tide-silver salmon still about they were increasingly being far outnumbered by red brown and black creatures intent on finding a nice redd somewhere upriver and spawning in November and December. I was bemoaning the fact that we would not be able to fish again until early March and that there were probably eminently catchable fresh fish running our river right through the winter (you probably recognize this sort of fish-hungry, SO hard-done-by, whining teenage in this case, self-pleading nonsense…).
Gordon pulled a magisterial face and uttered in his finest London West End stage actor of the 1930s voice:
“I don’t know about you, dear boy, but I wouldn’t care to have someone sticking a hook in my arse when I have my trousers down. We’ve had our spring and summer of fun with the fish. Best to leave them to it now”.
I have done ever since, though do understand why, with far far fewer Atlantic salmon (especially fresh ones) in our rivers nowadays, any salmon, however late-stager brown, might be made to do……