The secret trout spot

Sometimes some of the best days fishing you might have aren't too far away from home...

The question every fishing mad individual wants to hear, "do you want to go fishing?". The answer is always a resounding, yes! In late June, my stepdad Ali chose to take me to one of his favourite trout spots. It is under 20 minutes from where I live and I had never heard of it. I was totally intrigued and of course very excited.

We turned off of the main road and down a narrow track which wound its way down through some woodland and then opened up across a small area of moorland. At this point it was joked that I should probably have my eyes closed! After a few minutes of bumping down the track, we arrived at the hut next to the loch. It was a brilliant spot, secluded and in the middle of no where.

As we were setting up the rods the wind began to pick up. We questioned whether or not to go out on the boat but determination got the better of us and we headed out to brave the elements. Ali rowed us to the upwind shore which was sheltered slightly from the wind, we anchored here and began to fish.

It wasn't long before Ali's fly got totally nailed by a really nice sized rainbow trout, then again a short while later by a 1.5lb brown trout! We knew from this moment it was going to be a good day... I eventually got a rainbow trout on after feeling mildly intimidated by Ali's immediate success. Catching one reminded me how strong rainbow trout are, even the smaller ones. The one pictured above took me for a merry dance for around 5 minutes before we could land it, and that was on a 6wt! After a quick picture he was safely released back into the loch to fight someone else another day.

The wind really started to get wild and subsequently we began to drift anchor, at this point we decided it would be safer to head back to shore. Abandoning the boat actually had its benefits as this meant we could now walk around the loch and fish the downwind shore. Due to all the flies and bugs getting blown to that end of the loch, we were sure we would strike gold...

Ali had a quick cast in the sheltered bay next to the fishing hut before heading around the loch. First cast and bam! - he hooked into the trout pictured below. The image does not do this fish justice, it was big! It didn't breach the water at all during the fight and by the way Ali's rod was bent it looked a lot bigger until we landed it.

Once we released this cracking brownie, Ali had another cast. This was where things got really exciting... Almost as soon as his fly landed on the water, it got taken at speed by a trout which must have been at least (modestly estimated) 7-8lbs... the fish powerfully leapt out of the water like a tuna and instantly snapped his 4lb flurocarbon as if it wasn't even there... Ali and I simultaneously shrieked like little girls as this crazy and quite frankly massive trout disappeared into the abyss. We were lost for words and took a moment to comprehend what we had just seen!

If we weren't already enthusiastic and excited, we headed at speed round to the other side of the loch. We couldn't believe what we were seeing, huge hungry brownies hunting around in the choppy shallows tight in to the downwind bank. There were dorsal fins everywhere, just like sharks on the flats. It was one of those moments when you're so excited you can hardly gather yourself to fire out an effective cast into the prevailing wind! We were using heather fly patterns on the top and they were on fire..on almost every cast you were getting an aggressive take. The trout were not at all shy or spooky, they were undoubtably in the mood for food! We were catching trout sized between 1-2.5lbs at almost every cast. However, we didn't see another monster like the trout which broke Ali earlier on...

As the wind started to die down the trout also seemed to go quiet and the feeding frenzy was over. We reluctantly decided at this point, after several hours of superb fishing, to head home. This is an EPIC trout spot which I will certainly keep close to my chest...