I am a very keen angler & I have been looking forward to today for weeks now. I had been invited to fish a Scottish hill loch by a fairly famous journalist, this loch happens to be full of big Pike. Met up on his estate about 10 o’clock & drove on a very rough track to the loch. Though it was raining & we had to bail a lot of water out of the boat, I was full of optimism. Within 10 minutes of being on the water I had a Pike, a hard fighting 5lb. Eventually got it to the net, not before I had grabbed the wire trace (that stops them biting through the line), the Pike then decided he didn’t like being hauled aboard the boat & made a dash, stripping the wire over my finger causing a fair old cut. Netted it this time with blood dripping of my finger. After releasing it , wrapped up my finger in a hanky & carried on full of hope for the next one, which never came.
The attached photos show the beautiful loch we were fishing. On returning to the house a couple of hours later, my host gave me permission to fish his stocked trout loch for an hour, hence the other photo of the 2 1/2 lb Rainbow Trout. That has gone in the freezer & will be cold smoked at Christmas, along with all the others I catch this season. The neighbours & friends then get a side of smoked trout as their pressie from me, far better than smoked salmon as well.
