Making a splash

IN the very far north of Scotland, a tiny salmon stream pours out of a remote loch in the hills and flows through a bewitchingly wild landscape to her confluence with the grander and better known Naver. The Mallart is dotted with well-defined runs and pools throughout her nine miles, but, if I were granted only five consecutive casts anywhere in the world, they would be across a shallow stretch of nondescript, broken water hurrying downstream beneath a hill called Coriefeuran. I would take my single-handed Orvis travel rod and fish a small Munro Killer below a yard of exposed black peat that glistens like an open wound even in the driest summers.

When I arrived at Coriefeuran after several fishless hours on assignment to achieve a Macnab many years ago, I turned to the photographer and said: ‘We will get one here.’ And we did. Not only that, but we returned 24 hours later and caught another salmon from exactly