No tall tales but a super salmon
“We have perfect conditions” is a phrase I have never heard a gillie say before. There’s always something that isn’t right — the water level, the weather, the atmospheric pressure, the clothes I’m wearing, what I had for dinner the previous evening and so on. So you can understand my scepticism when the gillie, Douglas Aitken, casually spoke that hallowed phrase to me as I got out of my car to gaze upon the river Tweed.
Salmon fishing in the last months of the year is becoming increasingly popular, with the late runs of fish entering our river systems. The beat I was fishing was of idyllic beauty, with flocks of mallard passing overhead and little dippers flying from rock to rock, singing merrily. I passed my fly armoury to Douglas, who inspected the boxes with interest but shook his head, before pulling a fly called the Pavilion Shrimp from his pocket and tying it on to
