The folly of chasing salmon in a drought on a spate river in Scotland or ‘the chronicles of the Gobi desert salmon association’ could be the title of this post on our attempts to catch salmon on the Findhorn over the last two weeks. The reality of it is simple really, salmon will come if the conditions are right. Over the two weeks so far rain has teased us often and delivered once. As soon as it did we scored and so did lots of others who rushed to the river.
The rain fell all day but heavily over night and the river came up a foot. This time of year night is a bit of an over statement as the sun sets around 11 o’clock and first light is at 2am. First light found us hurtling down to the river with the rod carriers fully loaded. High tide was 6.30 and bang on cue at 5.30 grilse came racing over the cill and into the pool. First fish came at 6 o’clock a sea liced chrome grilse of about 6lbs. A day later and the river was back down and the wait began again for us and the salmon.