IT SEEMED like a good idea at the time and it was. I spent several months in the early 1980s travelling around Scotland speaking to senior gillies, the men who are, in my opinion, the backbone of Scottish salmon fishing.
Most have spent the majority of their lives looking after our rivers and the people who fish them.
I was delighted, therefore, to receive a letter last week from a reader who knew one of the great characters I met, Jimmy Ross of Rothes, on the River Spey.
As a girl she remembers: “Summer holidays spent pulling long green weeds out of the river and trying to cast a line, which I wasn’t very good at, and eating trout grilled with butter before I went to bed.”
Jimmy was brought up in Aberdeenshire and he started his career on the River Dee.
He told me he was introduced to fishing by an old gillie at Aboyne: “He gave me a bit gut and a fly and taught me all the knots I know or have ever used.”
Other Aboyne gillies, John Ingram, Billy Andrews and Willie Reid, taught him about salmon fishing.
By the time I met Jimmy he had worked as a gillie on the Spey for more than 48 years and fondly talked of the old days, when salmon were more plentiful than they are today.
He fished the Delfur Beat, now 2
Jimmy’s best day came when he was fishing with Sir Edward Martin and they took 67 salmon.
The heaviest fish he landed was 41lb 8oz and was taken by Ronnie Faulkner, hooked in Dewsies Hole and after a great struggle eventually landed a mile downstream near Croft Farm.
The day before I met Jimmy he had been on the river with one of Scotland’s legendary salmon fishers, Major John Ashley-Cooper, author of the book, The Great Salmon Rivers of Scotland.
It was bitterly cold so Jimmy began to light the fire in the fishing hut. Ashley-Cooper would have none of it and wanted to start fishing immediately. Jimmy said, “Right major, off you go and I’ll follow you down.”
But Ashley-Cooper wouldn’t agree. “No, Jimmy,” he said, “You go down the pool first. We have been fishing together for more than 20 years and I will have no argument. You go first and I will follow you down.”
Jimmy did, and soon hooked a spring salmon.
Jimmy said: “It weighed 18lb and the major landed it just perfectly.”
Yes, I thought as I left, it was a good idea to seek out gentlemen such as Jimmy Ross.