The Flyfish Journal - The Flyfish Journal 14.4
YONDER WIMPLING BURN: In Search of Trout, Whisky and the Family Tree
Words, Photos and Captions: Mike McPhee 2023-06-16 10:30:16
Connor Newcombe of the Peeblesshire Trout Fishing Association agreed to show me a favorite local beat on the River Clyde near the town of Peebles. The lush countryside, a castle and rising brown trout made this a dream spot.
Dave Downing picked me up at the Glasgow Airport at 8 a.m. Two hours later, I stood in the middle of the River Clyde in a setting that could be mistaken for an 18th-century oil painting alongside Downing, a former world championship angler on the National Scottish Fly Fishing team and a well-known fly tier who speaks with a thick, rapid-fire Glaswegian accent. He explained the essentials of Scottish flyfishing—patterns, techniques and a bit of history, more or less understood by my jetlagged brain.
The Clyde flows through the history-filled Scottish Lowlands and meets the Irish Sea at Glasgow. Rolling hills of lush green gave way to a meandering river of clear, soothing water. Old, moss-clad ash and oak trees lined the bank and rose above a symphony of colorful wildflowers. The fragrance was addictive and the insect life prodigious—more fly types than one can carry in a fly box to be sure. Clyde-style flies have taken on their own legendary status and generally refer to a lightly dressed, delicate pattern, wings tied upright and of local natural colors with whimsical names like the Blae & Black, Cran Swallow and Hen Blackie. A swan floated past and a trout rose steadily in front of me. Although I’d landed in Glasgow 24 hours late and thoroughly exhausted, this was how I had pictured the start of the journey.
We packed up and headed back into the Glasgow city center, where we found ourselves surrounded by swarms of people drinking and yelling. We had arrived in the middle of a football riot. The historic city center—Merchant City—was cordoned off by police. Downing had to drop me several blocks from my hotel and I made my way through the crowd with luggage and dripping waders hung over my shoulder. Jetlag faded and my muddled brain was jolted to attention by loud and unfamiliar football chants sung by the inebriated throngs. The Glasgow Celtics had just won the league championship and mayhem was sweeping the inner city. Glasgow’s two teams—the Celtics and the Rangers—are not just divided by neighbourhoods, but by politics and religion. The bitter rivalry meant that you would not find a shred of Ranger blue (my family’s team) in the sea of Celtic green that night. Passed-out bodies lay across the sidewalk amid broken bottles and youth climbed victorian era statues—a surreal end to an epic day. Before retiring, I hit the famous Pot Still Whisky Bar for a wee dram of Scottish ambrosia from their 800-plus single malt menu. Sleep came easily. In the morning, I would explore my ancestry.
On a ferry crossing off the west coast, the island of Colonsay came into view like a mirage shimmering in the distance. Craggy hills spotted with greenery and enticing white sand beaches slowly took shape. This was the ancestral home of Clan McPhee, and I was the first in my direct family to be back in 200 years. My father and his family immigrated from Glasgow to Canada in the late 1960s, but they had never set foot on Colonsay. Like its sister island Islay, Colonsay is located in the archipelago of the Southern Hebrides. The island is small (population 127), rugged, beautiful and immersed in a slow-paced charm that makes you forget which century you are in. Indecipherable Scandinavian nomenclature—Port Scalasaig, for example, or the abandoned village of Riasg Buidhe—spoke to a past Viking influence, and ancient standing stones—monuments of mysterious origin, like Stonehenge, spread through the British Isles—harkened back to the third millennium BCE.
A plaque on one such stone read: “In 1623 Malcolm, the last Chief of our clan was murdered at this stone by a renegade MacDonald…” Malcom was the last McPhee chieftain. The name McPhee in its Gaelic form is Mac a’Phi and means “dark man of peace,” with modern variations including MacFie and Macfee. The clan is one of the oldest in Scotland and said to be descended from a Pictish king; the McPhees stood with Robert the Bruce when he defeated the English at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314.
On this island of my ancestors, I found a number of lochs that held native brown trout and were easily fished from shore. Legend has it that monks introduced these browns as early as the eighth century and they have been thriving ever since. I spent a few days hiking around, avoiding sheep and thistle, dealing with aggressive winds blowing in from the North Atlantic. I tried dry fly-nymph dropper combos that are illegal on my home waters in British Columbia, but are widely used in Scotland. You can use up to three flies—locals recommend it.
Fishing three flies in that late spring wind turned out to be an exercise in frustration and I tested out some newly acquired, colorful Scottish slang. Though I had a couple strikes on the dropper, in the end it came to streamers. Many of the lochs had a boat available and I headed out for deeper water and exploration—and was promptly trapped on the wrong side of the loch. The obstinate wind was more than I was used to. I took stock of the situation with a wee dram enjoyed on the shoreline, imagining all those that had enjoyed this spot for centuries before me, trying to entice brown trout with a fly while listening to the wind.
At the 250-year-old Colonsay Inn, with views of the sea and creaky floors redolent with the past, a young MacPhee server lass relayed that they got regular visits from clan members exploring roots and landscapes alike. The inn’s pub served as the island’s social hub and football rivalries showed themselves again in a match between the Glasgow Rangers and German team Eintracht Frankfurt. Some inebriated locals were Celtic fans, and very aggressively anti-Rangers. After I made the mistake of cheering for a Ranger goal, fisticuffs were only avoided by the bartender telling them I was a hotel guest.
I chatted with an old, retired fisherman who relayed tales of the sea and rich fishing grounds that surround the island in between yelling at a dog roaming the pub. Thick island accent and beer in hand, he was exactly what you would expect of a weathered seadog in the Hebrides. I felt a deeper sense of connection to Colonsay then I had expected. Nostalgia was now fully awake and in the pilot’s seat.
Just 30 miles from Colonsay by ferry is Islay (pronounced eye-luh). Known as Scotland’s “Whisky Island,” Islay is an epicenter of single malt culture. Peaty Islay scotch may be an acquired taste, but acquired it I have. Formidable winter gales blow in from the North Atlantic and lay their salty mist over the peat bogs of the island. The peat was traditionally cut from the bogs and used to heat the distillery floors where barley was dried, infusing the grains with the distinctive, smoky flavor profile. The smell is as delicious as the delicate liquid. Like watching and slowly stalking a rising trout, one must be patient with scotch and enjoy the moment.
I had made plans with a man named Ronnie from the Port Ellen flyfishing club to hit a few of the scenic local trout spots, but gale force winds and sideways rain shattered that plan. Ronnie, a lifelong islander, was as warm and friendly as they come. In place of fishing, he told tales of trout and generously gave me some flies he had tied. He then gave me what turned out to be an important bit of advice: “Do the warehouse tour with local legend Ian at the Lagavulin Distillery.” Later in the day, I enjoyed the most incredible scotch I have ever tasted—25-year-old Lagavulin straight from the barrel. I thanked the wind and rain for forcing me to the whisky cellar.
The trout and the people had started to leave an impression on me. I gained a greater appreciation for brown trout with their colorful, feisty, distinctive personality—not unlike the Scots themselves. Beautiful creatures inhabiting poetic places, browns have populated the Scottish waters since the last ice age. They helped spawn modern day flyfishing and the rivers there captured the imaginations of early pioneering anglers. There is literary mention of dry fly experimentation on the River Tweed as early as the 1840s, which may have preceded the dry fly trends on the chalk streams of England. In the mid-1800s a new technique of upstream fishing was reported in the Scottish Lowlands. The huge variety of natural insect life, clear water and perfect seams I witnessed helped me understand what those early anglers were up against and what inspired them to innovate. I still wonder how they wet waded in the age before waders. Did that necessitate a wee dram to warm up? Just as whisky making developed further in the 1800s, so too did flyfishing. I was beginning to understand the connection between water, place, trout and whisky. It was easy to imagine a different time, with anglers dressed in tweed, cane rod in hand and flask in pocket.
Scotland’s bard, Robert Burns, intimated as much in his 1795 poem “Scotch Song.” The first two stanzas read:
Now spring has clad the grove in green,
And strew’d the lea wi’ flowers;
The furrow’d, waving corn is seen
Rejoice in fostering showers:
While ilka thing in nature join
Their sorrows to forego,
O why thus all alone are mine
The weary steps of woe?
The trout in yonder wimpling burn
That glides, a silver dart,
And safe beneath the shady thorn
Defies the angler’s art —
My life was ance that careless stream,
That wanton trout was I;
But love, wi’ unrelenting beam,
Has scorch’d my fountains dry…
Many of the historic Scottish rivers seem straight out of a Burns poem; they linger in your mind and imprint on your soul.
After the islands, I headed inland. On the edge of the Highlands—an area that more or less encompasses the northwest half of the country—I passed the legendary River Tay which emerges clear and cool from a loch of the same name at Kenmore in Perthshire. I had been invited to watch and take photos of some of Scotland’s best fly anglers as they competed in the Scottish National River Championship for spots on the national team. Each competitor took a beat on the Tummel, a tributary of the Tay, and a classic freestone highland river reputed to be among the top trout waters in the country.
Two dozen of Scotland’s finest anglers gathered early in the morning. Each brought a judge to send with another angler to measure fish. Dave Downing was angling for a spot in the finals and he did well with his Euro nymphing set-up picking up several stunning browns. The action was surprisingly intense at times, as anglers with a fish in the net rushed to their assigned judge for measurements before quickly releasing the trout. I met a young spectator who happened to be a McPhee and asked me about my travels.
A stone’s throw from the river I toured Blair Athol distillery—a prime example of classic Highland single malt. Their water source, a creek which runs between the buildings, is a clear, trout-bearing stream. I immediately started looking for fishable pools.
The stories of scotch whisky and flyfishing became intimately intertwined with the advent of the industrial age. Both involved the refinement of techniques, the development of new technology, and a dogged pursuit of innovation. Distilleries and trout need the same thing—clear, clean water in steady supply—and the increase in leisure time to pursue trout that came with the dawn of the machine age meant greater opportunities to take advantage of both. The two fit together in tidy fashion, like these late-18th-century verses from angler and scotch enthusiast Burns:
Let other poets raise a fracas ‘Bout vines, an‘ wines, an‘ drucken Bacchus, An‘ crabbit names an‘stories wrack us, An‘ grate our lug: I sing the juice Scotch bear can mak us, In glass or jug. O thou, my muse! guid auld Scotch drink! Whether thro‘ wimplin worms thou jink, Or, richly brown, ream owre the brink, In glorious faem, Inspire me, till I lisp an‘ wink, To sing thy name!...
After a couple days in the Highlands, I headed south to the region near England known as the Borderlands. The River Tweed begins here, high in the sheep-strewn hills at Tweed’s Well, before meandering through the Borderlands and gaining size as it collects its various tributaries and meets the North Sea at Berwick-upon-Tweed. Thick with Scottish and angling history, the Tweed has seen Roman legions camp on its banks and early anglers trial flies and techniques. A boom of sorts began in the 1830s, with anglers coming by coach from Edinburgh. In 1858, James Glass Bertram wrote The Border Angler: A Guide-book to the Tweed and Its Tributaries and Other Streams, one of the first fishing guides to the area. The famous Greenwell’s Glory was first tied on the Tweed to match the ample olive hatches the river hosts.
A member of the local angling club in Peebles, a lad in his 20s named Connor, agreed to show me a favorite beat on the Tweed. We headed out a trail along the lush banks just upstream from town and found trout rising in a corner pool beneath a castle known as Neidpath. I had been picturing the ultimate Scottish flyfishing photo for years, and here it was.
Connor’s youth betrayed his fly knowledge and a well-seasoned cast. Spring flowers and huge, lush trees watched us sneak through the bramble and grass to cast to rising trout. Well beaten tracks along shore spoke to the generations of anglers that had worked the beat before us. We managed to fool a few smaller browns, but the bigger trout eluded capture. By afternoon, my old friend the wind rose to remind me not to get complacent.
On the last day of my two-week tour I met up with Liam, a local fly angler and guide on the River Annan, a small stream known for hefty browns, lush green double banks, gravel bars and pools of various sizes. We spotted a number of risers and I hooked a few on a dry—the biggest about three pounds. These were beautiful fish that offered beautiful takes. In true brown trout fashion, we had to creep through the grass on all fours or sneak way out and around in the water to get within casting distance. One such fish was a “one cast” monster rising in about eight inches of water beside the bank. He snubbed my proposal and scooted off. Standing in a pool in the last hours of my last day, I started to worry about not getting a truly large fish. I had spied some massive browns and hooked some good-sized fish, but a proper brute had eluded me.
Just as my fish anxiety was giving way to acceptance, a multi-colored explosion erupted from the water about a rod length away. A hefty brown launched itself a few feet from the water’s surface, higher than you would think he was capable given his bulk. The golden fish went airborne again and started its acrobatic program. Liam had fooled it and his reel sang. The beast headed downstream and continued its dance. I may be biased, but in the net it proved to be perhaps the most beautiful brown I’ve ever seen and the biggest of the journey. I’d stubbornly stayed with dry flies that day; Liam got the beast on a streamer.
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