Fly Fishing and Fly Tying Magazine December 2025 Back Issue

There’s much about Eric Mc Vicar’s report on fishing Loch Maree for the first time in 65 years (see page 16) that rings true with me. When I was about eight years old, my parents took us on a caravanning holiday to northwest Scotland, which included a stay at Poolewe. They would have probably remembered it as the holiday of eternal rain and midges, but I remember it vividly as the best run of migratory fish I have ever seen, to this very day.
A mad-keen coarse-fisher at the time, I trotted a worm in the river Ewe sea pool, which offered free fishing downstream of the road bridge. To this day, I have never witnessed so many fish ascending a river; salmon
and huge sea trout were jumping right over my rod, over my float, and past my disbelieving face. I don’t recall a single minute when a fish was not airborne in that pool.
Of course, I didn’t catch a single one; they were all intent on heading to Loch Maree, just a couple of miles upstream. In those days, Loch Maree was world famous as a sea trout fishery, catching at least 2,000
large sized sea trout and salmon every year. And yet, by the time I knew enough about sea trout fishing on a loch with fly to actually go and fish it, the Loch Maree run had disappeared. I can remember one
year, in the late 80s, the catch-record had plummeted to just eight fish. The ravages of fish farm sea-lice had caused an abrupt decline in numbers in just a handful of years and soon after, the Loch Maree Hotel, the hub of the fishing which was only accessible through ‘dead
man’s shoes’, had closed.
The decline was so fast and seemingly terminal that,
today, I’ve never fished on Loch Maree. This huge, wild loch, dominated by Slioch and the Torridon mountains, and garnished with Scots pines has to be one of the most iconic of Scottish fishing locations.

Enjoy the rest of the issue. Mark Bowler, editor