“fishing” the goldenloch (part 1)
It was during a very wet year in the early 1980s that the Nicol family first muted the idea of a fishery being created, my father and mother who were both great anglers in their day, and had many friends and colleagues in the fishing industry, and having spent most of their time travelling the length and breadth of the country in the pursuit of their sport, they were always looking for that special place, that they could both enjoy fishing, somewhere that had a tranquil setting, somewhere they could just relax, most of their fishing buddies of that time, tended to fish just occasionally on lochs and rivers, but all loved to go in the summer for the wild trout and salmon up north, loch fishing, was pretty much in its infancy and was concentrated mostly around Loch Leven, Lindores and Cameron Reservoir, in reading of my fathers diaries it is noted that the quality of fish on all of these places was pretty poor, with the exception of Loch Leven, which “Improved dramatically towards the end of the season” All this was during the 60 and 70 and the assumption here is, that, there was not a huge amount of fish suppliers, in fact some were never stocked, and also that Fish husbandry then, was not nearly as good as now, I can also remember as a young boy being involved with the total eradication of all the pike and perch in Lindores back in 1966, by Massie Hamilton, this was when thousands of fish were poisoned in an attempt to give Lindores trout a chance to survive and grow, my friend and I were on a boat throwing this grey sandy gunge into the water, as men took it in turn to row round the loch, millions of fish were killed and removed, and boy did they stink, Mr Hamilton tried to set up a hatchery at Woodmill farm, and as a boy I would help to feed the fingerlings’ but after a few years the disease levels were too high and it was abandoned, Gordon Howe a close family friend was a businessman and entrepreneur, who was probably one of the first to see the opportunity of fly fishing as a sport in Scotland, and with the help and support of people like my father, made Loch Fitty into a new and great fishery, the average fish size then was about 1 ½ pounds and a big fish was 2lbs, but the bag sizes were huge, some of the entries in his diary are for amazing numbers, two examples are “Montgomery’s boat and friends, 350 trout for a good day” “ Collison and Robin caught 60 and put as many back in the water, not really the done thing”
All this time my parents used to say that what was needed was a small friendly fishery where you could go and just experiment, relax and enjoy a quiet day without the stress of having to be super organised, a place that you could go and for a few hours, feel like it was your own private fishery, also but most importantly it had to be quite challenging, and it must have quality trout, so my fathers remit was set and has remained with us till this day, We decided to empty what was a small loch and then employ some experts in the form of “The Stirling University Institute of Aquaculture” who designed what was in their opinion the ultimate trout habitat for fly fishing in a small fresh water loch, this was done and a series of levels were taken which showed the topography and enabled the designers’ to put in place what was needed to make fish movement a priority, three distinct travel routes were designed for the fish and many trenches ledges and interconnecting pools and resting spots were created, also designed was an easy spot to fish which now I would say was a mistake as it is far to easy to catch fish at one particular spot, OK job done, what was needed next was someone to create this and Henderson’s of Ladybank were given the job which took 6 months, exactly to the blueprints after they had finished in the summer of 1984 a massive drag line was brought in ( it was the one that had spent its entire life on the Clyde cleaning out the river for launching ships) which removed 1000s of tons of material and that when the secret of where the pools were made, it then took a further year for the water to fill and clear, and so in the spring of 1985 we had the beginnings of our fishery.