A mighty river that flows with character

t is late in the afternoon of Saturday, 7 October 1922. A large cock salmon rests in the neck of the Boat Pool on the Glendelvine beat of the River Tay. Some way upstream of the fish, Miss Georgina Ballantine sits in a boat with her father, James, harling a ‘dace’ bait downstream of their position. Conflicting accounts exist as to whether this was a natural dace rigged on a spinning ‘mount’, or rather an artificial interpretation of dace, which we would recognise today as a ‘lure’. As the boat works from side to side across the river channel, it slowly drops downriver with each pass, the bait working away tantalisingly in the currents below. As it wobbles and flutters in the stream, it catches the autumn light, disturbs the calm of the water around it and quietly announces its presence. Unbeknownst to Miss Ballantine and her father, salmon fishing history is about to be written. The fish hits the bait, line peels off the reel and the battle begins, a struggle that would last for more than two hours. As darkness falls, the fish is eventually landed downstream in the Sparrowmuir Pool and, 100 years on, Miss Ballantine’s